


The Logic of Monsters

by MaCall (misterpointy)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Dragons, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Not Canon Compliant, POV Original Female Character, POV Third Person Plural, Present Tense, Witches, Wordcount: Over 75.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:10:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 75,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misterpointy/pseuds/MaCall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”<br/>—Terry Pratchett, <em>I Shall Wear Midnight</em></p><p>In which Edward Nygma is not great at girls, Oswald Cobblepot is the most awkward bisexual, and Harvey Dent has a fruitless vendetta against the godfather who killed his twin brother. Or, the origin stories of a librarian, a waitress, and a serial killer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Love with Consummate, Superb, and Complicated Materials

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** : There is a rape scene at the beginning of this story—it’s not graphic and it lasts approximately two paragraphs, but I don’t want anyone to be triggered or squicked without a warning. Also, this fic is loosely based on _Batman: The Long Halloween_ and _Batman: Dark Victory_ , so oodles of people get shot to death up in here. I’m basically adapting storylines from the comics around various plot threads from the show and ignoring what I don’t like about it. Loosely compliant with canon events until the S2 finale. Totally AU for later seasons, because I wrote this before S3 aired.
> 
> (1) I posted an earlier non-witchy version of this last year called _Wrapped in a Mystery_ and then deleted it in a fit of what I like to call _insane in the membrane, insane in the brain_ when I was adjusting to new antianxiety meds. Connie is based on Conundrum, Eve is an amalgamation of Gilda Gold and Evelyn Dent, and Hallie is based on Penguin’s henchwoman Lark. Any characters you might not recognize are from the comics also.
> 
> (2) Titles and headings are scrumped from “Ten Theses on Monsters and Monstrosity” by Allen S. Weiss.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head pre-show.

**Superheroes always have broken hearts**  
**and tragic backstories, so maybe I’m doing okay.**  
**In my dreams we are brave enough**  
**to leap tall buildings in a single bound,**  
**and see through walls and also  
**never lie to each other.****

Clementine von Radics, “When He Asks Me to Describe Fear”

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
**Prologue**  
In Love with Consummate, Superb, and Complicated Materials

* * *

**I**

_The Demiurge was in love with consummate, superb, and complicated materials. We shall give priority to trash. We are simply entranced and enchanted by the cheapness, shabbiness, and inferiority of material._ — _Bruno Schulz (1977:61-62)  
_ [This epigraph serves as my first thesis.]

* * *

Constance Crowley II meets Edward Nashton II when they’re both fourteen years old. Ed gets a full academic scholarship to Gotham Academy between junior high and high school. Connie is the sole heiress to the Crowley fortune, the only daughter of Dr. Ronald Crowley, whose namesake died childless over the summer and left the family fortune to her father.

Ed knows Dr. Crowley as the psychologist at Gotham City Public Elementary School, whom he saw regularly when he was a student there because his first grade teacher suspected he had an autism spectrum disorder and his second grade teacher realized he was being abused by his father. There was a picture of Connie on the desk, her coal black hair a stark contrast to her porcelain skin and eerily pale gray eyes—like the metallic sheen of an uncovered autopsy table. Ed remembers comparing her to Snow White, the idea of her as a fairytale princess sticking in his mind like a thorn for years until he meets her outside of his own head. Dr. Crowley means well, but Ed doesn’t want to talk about his parents or himself, so he speaks in riddles to avoid the truth.

Connie isn’t the first person to notice the inevitable bullying that begins after Ed starts attending Gotham Academy, but she is the first to do something about it. Evelyn Gold, her cousin, stands to her left and looks unimpressed. Which might not seem like much of a contribution, except that even at fourteen Eve is tall, blonde, and gorgeous. Where is her awkward phase? Nobody knows, and teenage boys don’t care. If Connie is Snow White, then Eve is every archetypal fairytale heroine with fair skin, pale eyes—a few shades darker than Connie’s, storm clouds to her wood smoke—and golden hair. Ed learns that Eve is less Goldilocks and more Briar Rose: when she smiles, her blood red lips showcasing perfect white teeth, it almost looks as though her pretty mouth is full of thorns.

Halcyon Larkin, their best friend, presses the blade of a knife to the throat of the bully who is attempting to shut Ed into a full size locker. Everyone knows her uncle is the leader—or daailóu, the Chinese equivalent of a don—of the Lucky Hands Triad, whose signature weapon is a meat cleaver. It’s also totally plastic, a prop she “borrowed” from the drama club in case she gets caught threatening Carmine Falcone’s grandson; she loves Connie enough to start a mob war on her behalf, but she wants to save that for a special occasion. Hallie defied the laws of dominant and recessive genetics to inherit her auburn hair from her Irish grandfather. There are people who persist in asking whether or not she’s a natural redhead. When one poor unfortunate soul pointed out that her eyelashes are black, she took her mascara out of her backpack and held it between her fingers so it would look like she was flipping him off.

“Did you know bullying is a needlessly cruel pastime favored only by the weak and stupid?” says Connie. “I thought you were neither, Vincenzo. I really hate being proven wrong.”

Vincenzo Gigante looks from Hallie still holding the plastic knife across his jugular, to Eve leaning against the line of lockers with her blonde ringlets artfully pinned to froth over her shoulder, to Connie looking disappointed in him. “Don’t worry your pretty little heads.” Vincenzo oozes condescension as he yanks Ed out of the locker so hard he stumbles and gives him an obligatory manly clap on the shoulder that makes him wince. “I was just fucking with him,” he says before retreats with his younger brother Luigi following his lead.

Ed scowls as he adjusts his glasses, which were knocked askew at some point when he was getting stuffed into his locker. “Thank you,” he says stiffly.

Eve scoffs. “Now say it again,” she folds her arms, “like you mean it.”

Ed’s mouth gapes open a bit when he looks at Eve and he flushes under the collar of his shirt when his dick twitches because she’s looking at him like he’s a piece of gum stuck to the heel of her designer shoe. Then his gaze flicks to Connie and lingers because he’s kept the idea of her tucked away in one corner of his mind for years; he can’t quite convince himself she’s really here, and coming to his rescue like he’s the damsel in distress to boot. “Thank you,” he says, his tone softer, more genuine, “Miss Crowley.”

Connie shrugs with one shoulder, tilting her earlobe into it. “You’re welcome.”

Ed smiles at her without showing his teeth, one corner of his lips unfurling. “What can be opened, but can’t be closed?” he asks.

Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth while she thinks it through. Ed is suddenly grateful that his blazer is two sizes too large, but he holds his chemistry textbook strategically just in case. This puberty thing is not his jam.

“Eggs,” she answers.

Ed grins wider, pleasantly surprised at how quickly she figured it out. “Correct,” he says.

* * *

Connie starts dying her black hair a virulent shade of green when they’re sixteen, first in one thick streak so a verdant curl hangs down from the clip she twists her hair into most days. Eve refuses to debut without Connie, so Ed ends up escorting her to a cotillion. Torrance Gold, Eve’s mother and Connie’s aunt, glares daggers at her the whole time she’s onstage with her father because the verdurous color stands out violently against the pristine white of her dress. Connie gives Ed a bright green bowtie that matches perfectly. Ed pulls his notebook out of the pocket of his dress pants and writes _being passive-aggressive is the bread and butter for the upper crust of Gotham City_ when nobody is looking.

Vincenzo is there escorting his cousin Kitrina Falcone. Umberto Maroni is escorting his twin sister Peppina. Kitty and Pina are best friends despite the bitter rivalry between their families that began with their great-grandfathers when Luigi “Big Lou” Maroni shot Vincent Falcone’s son in the back. Carmine survived because his father took him to the hospital where he was operated on by a fledgling surgeon named Martha Kane, who later married billionaire philanthropist Thomas Wayne.

Kitty throws an after party in her parents’ guesthouse at their estate just off Cape Carmine. Eve wheedles Connie into going and they drive to Robbinsville with Ed and Hallie in the backseat of her car, each avoiding physical contact with the other at all costs.

Connie eventually goes questing for an unoccupied bathroom and ends up in an ensuite attached to one of the upstairs bedrooms. Vincenzo follows her and waits for her to finish using the bathroom. Which takes a long time because she’s still wearing her ball gown and she’s trying not to stain it.

“Hey,” he grins at her from where he sits on the bed and raises his bottle of beer to showcase his appreciation, “you looked great up there.”

“Thanks,” Connie fizzles out awkwardly on the sibilant. Vincenzo is a senior—he doesn’t really have girlfriends, but he has no shortage of friendly girls. What is he doing up here lying in wait for her, a chubby sophomore who has never been kissed nor expressed interest in doing what comes after kissing?

Vincenzo pats the covers next to him like an invitation. Connie sits beside him, carefully smoothing the full skirt of her dress beneath her thunder thighs. Vincenzo makes a few minutes of small talk before he tries to kiss her. Connie pushes him away so forcefully she almost falls off the bed.

“What the hell?” she yelps.

“Connie, it’s okay.” Vincenzo moves back into her personal bubble and puts his hand on her shoulder.

“No,” she shakes her head so fast she discombobulates herself, “it’s not.”

Connie tangles her foot in her skirt as she attempts to get away and hits the back of her head on the sharp corner of the trunk at the foot of the bed. When she wakes up, she’s on the bed. Vincenzo is on top of her, moving inside her. It _hurts_ , but his hand is covering her lips and chin; she can’t scream, so instead she cries with her glasses askew, his breath nauseatingly hot on her neck and his odious teenage boy smell invading her nostrils. It stretches out, each jagged thrust inside her feeling much longer because of the pain.

Ed eventually comes looking for her and opens the bedroom door. When she sees him over Vincenzo’s shoulder, his name comes out as a squeak muffled by Vincenzo’s sweaty palm. Ed picks up a marble replica of _Winged Victory of Samothrace_ from the dresser and uses the statue to hit Vincenzo with a surprising amount of force, hard enough to knock him off her and the bed itself. Connie scrambles until her back hits the wall and sinks down until her knees are curled against her chest, the hem of her skirt ripping under her feet, the fabric underneath her thighs stained with blood. Ed makes a gnarled noise low in his chest that’s almost inhuman before he hits Vincenzo again, and again, and again.

“Ed.” Connie exhales his name in a broken whisper as Vincenzo goes limp on the floor. “Ed,” she says, louder this time, “stop!”

“Why?” Ed asks, his voice flat and sharp like a knife, “he deserves to die for what he did to you.”

Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth and presses her mouth into a thin line. Ed sees red again when he realizes she’s trying not to cry harder. “Carmine Falcone is his grandfather,” she swallows thickly, “and he might have you killed for this. I don’t think he saw you, which just might keep you safe. Maybe he deserves to die for—” she forces herself to breathe through the dregs of a sob, “—for raping me, but you don’t. Ed, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, but you’re one of my best friends. I think losing you would be even worse.”

Ed offers his hands to her, pulling her into his arms on impulse after he gets her back on her feet. It occurs to Connie that he’s never touched her this much or for this long before. “I’m sorry,” he releases her and takes a step back, “you probably don’t want to make physical contact right now. Especially not with another male—”

“Ed,” Connie takes a deep breath and decides she must be in shock to feel so calm in the aftermath of her own rape, “you’re nothing like Vincenzo.”

Ed nods, but he doesn’t unclench. In the two years she’s known him, she’s never seen him without tension threaded through the lines of his lanky body. Connie reaches for his hand and he lets her take it, her fingers crooked around his instead of intertwining them. Ed fails to notice the shattered glass in the bathroom sink or the mirror cracked on the wall of the guest room before they leave.

* * *

Eve convinces her to press charges. Connie’s parents hire a prosecutor and the case of Gigante versus Crowley goes to trial during their junior year at Gotham Academy. Vincenzo is found not guilty and the charges against him are dropped. Anyone could deduce that Sofia Falcone paid off the judge and the jury on behalf of her son, but most people are content to assume Connie lied to ruin his life because he spurned her or something equally ludicrous.

Ed has never regretted not killing someone more, not even his father.

* * *

Eve applies to Yale and gets in over spring break during their senior year. Ed legally changes his surname after his eighteenth birthday, two months before they graduate from Gotham Academy. When he, Connie, and Hallie matriculate at Gotham University that autumn, he registers as Edward Nygma. Connie and Hallie end up living in an efficiency triple with a girl named Kristen Kringle, who becomes their new best friend. Ed puts out the torch he carried for Eve in high school and starts crushing on Kristen instead.

Kristen and Connie end up in the same MLIS program at G. U. after they finish undergrad. Hallie starts waitressing full time at the _Square Diner_ , where she’s worked part time since they were teenagers, because she can’t do much else with a theatre degree. Eve goes to law school at Yale. Ed applies out of state because GU doesn’t have a postgraduate criminalistics program, and he temporarily relocates to the Emerald City after he gets into Seattle University. Connie kisses him goodbye at the airport, her lips closer to the corner of his mouth than his cheek, the smudge of dark red lipstick she leaves behind earning him nods of approval from the businessmen across the aisle on the plane before he licks it off without thinking. Sometimes he thinks about the taste of her lipstick, how softly her mouth pressed against the corner of his lips, but she’s his best friend—his only friend, if he’s being honest with himself—so he refuses to go there even when he’s alone in the dark.

Ed has a forensics job with the G. C. P. D. waiting for him after he graduates. Kristen starts working there a year after he does, three months before she gets her degree in archival studies. Connie becomes what she always wanted to be when she grew up: a librarian at the Gotham City Public Library. Then she asks Hallie, Kristen, and Ed to live at Newgrange, the ancestral manor built by the Crowley family when Gotham was founded in the seventeenth century, with her after her parents retire and move to Copenhagen. Hallie refuses when she realizes she can’t get out of her lease. Kristen declines because she doesn’t want to leave the brownstone she grew up in even though she can barely afford it now that her grandmother is dead. Ed gets a wing of the manor to himself after he agrees to be her roommate.

Eve finishes law school at Yale and gets a job as a secretary in the district attorney’s office when she returns to Gotham. Harvey Dent, the youngest assistant district attorney in the history of their city, falls head over heels for her and proposes on their three month anniversary. Eve, to the shock of nearly everyone who knows her, says yes.

* * *

Richard Daniel, the president of Gotham City Bank, is shot on the steps of the same theatre a year before Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered. It gets hushed up because Johnny Viti—Carmine Falcone’s nephew—is the shooter. Falcone moves his money from several bank locations throughout the city into the armory. Johnny is found dead in his bathtub the morning after Halloween. When the homicide detectives find his wife Lucia on the kitchen floor with a bullet hole in her head, they assume he killed her and committed suicide in the aftermath.

When a gang of Irish mobsters are shot in a banquet room at the Royal Hotel in Midtown on Thanksgiving, their killer isn’t visible on any camera feeds inside the hotel and each witness describes a different person to the detectives who end up on the case.

Milos Grapa, Falcone’s bodyguard, is murdered on Falcone’s doorstep on Christmas morning. Alberto Falcone, the younger of Falcone’s sons, is shot at a New Year’s Eve party on his yacht and falls into the river. _Gotham Gazette_ starts calling the perpetrator the Holiday Killer and they assume the murderer has a score to settle with Falcone until Salvatore Maroni’s son Umberto is shot and killed on Valentine’s Day. Maroni’s henchmen start dropping like flies in the next few months before a gunsmith from Chinatown is murdered in his shop on Mother’s Day. Lou Maroni, Sal’s father, is shot and killed in his garden on Father’s Day. Carla Viti—Falcone’s younger sister—investigates the death of her son until she and her husband Felice are shot and killed on August second, Falcone’s birthday. Rocco Gigante, Falcone’s son-in-law, is murdered on Labor Day.

Oswald Cobblepot starts brewing the inevitable war between Falcone and Maroni a week after that because he knows their empire has all but fallen.

James Gordon pushes him in the river five days later.


	2. What the Unformed Is to the Sublime, the Deformed Is to Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 1x01 (“Pilot”) and 1x06 (“Spirit of the Goat”).

**Quit wasting time**  
**polishing your teeth  
**and renouncing gravity.****

**You will fall when it is time to fall.**

Rachel McKibbens, “Advice for a Sociopath”

* * *

 _The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 1**  
What the Unformed Is to the Sublime, the Deformed Is to Monsters

* * *

**II**

In the _Critique of Judgment_ (1790), Kant shows how the aesthetic domain exists without any regulatory _a priori_ whatsoever. This principle could be summed up and radicalized in one word: _monsters_. What the unformed is to the sublime, the deformed is to monsters.

* * *

Constance Crowley I dies the same day Bruce Wayne buries his parents. Connie gets the call at their funeral because her great-grandmother was Bruce’s great-grandaunt. Gertrud Kapelput blames Hallie when her son goes missing a few days before the closed casket service Connie arranges for her grandmother and namesake. Ed wears a green tie to the funeral. Torrie glares daggers at him the whole time, but the smile Connie gives him when she notices is worth it. Although she does cover her mouth with her cupped palms immediately because giggling at funerals is inappropriate. Eve puts one hand on her knee and whispers that she must still be in shock for the benefit of the distant relatives making disapproving faces behind them.

“You know what this means,” Eve hisses when she gives Harvey the slip and corners Connie at the wake being held by her mother. “You know what we have to do—”

Connie blanks so hard it must be forced. “I don’t have to do anything,” she bites her right thumbnail to the quick and tucks the half-moon into the pocket of her sweater with the nine others she gnawed off earlier.

Eve sighs and folds her arms because her curls are pinned up; she can’t play with her hair, so she does something else with her hands. “You’re bleeding,” she informs her cousin archly.

“I know.” Connie sucks the blood off her thumb and licks the corner of her mouth, tasting lipstick and iron.

“There you are.” Harvey grins at Eve and puts his hand on her back, pressing the warmth of his palm into the hollow between her shoulder blades. “Hallie was looking for both of you.”

“Awesome.” Connie oozes sarcasm as she skirts by Harvey and goes questing for Hallie—who is probably wondering how to hoard the gold leaf festooned everywhere in this manor without getting caught—and poor Ed, who probably shouldn’t be left alone with her extended family.

Eve waits until her cousin is gone before she leans into her fiancée. Harvey smooths the hand on her back to her waist and pulls her into his arms. “I have a profound urge to kiss you right now,” he whispers conspiratorially in her ear, “but I know it would be completely inappropriate.”

“I’m tempted to let you,” she whispers back, “if only to see the scandalized look on my mother’s face.”

Harvey chuckles and presses a light kiss to her forehead. Eve is tall enough in her high heels to scrape her teeth over his pulse surreptitiously and leave a telltale smudge of her lipstick just above the collar of his shirt. Harvey knows she didn’t accept his proposal to piss her mother off, but he definitely benefits from how much Eve revels in doing exactly that. Still, he doesn’t let her muss up his hair to make it look like they did more than kissing at the funeral. Harvey hopes her mother will approve of him someday. It’ll be a cold day in hell if she does, but stranger things have happened.

* * *

Oswald returns to Gotham and tells Gordon that a war is coming the week he gets a job at Balmonté’s and is promoted to restaurant manager after a robbery he orchestrated. Then he murders the thieves he hired to rob the restaurant. Unfortunately one of them is Darius Larkin, otherwise known as Hallie’s douchebag older brother. Dr. Guerra, the medical examiner at the G. C. P. D., rules it a triple suicide. Hallie identifies her brother’s corpse before her shift at the diner starts.

Darius put her in the hospital randomly during their childhood while their father was too busy running a restaurant to notice and their mother pretended the abuse wasn’t happening because she refused to believe that her son was capable of such cruelty. Connie got between Hallie and Darius once and he dislocated her shoulder. Hallie came back from spring break during their freshman year at GU with a split lip and a black eye. Connie and Kristen convinced her to file a restraining order. Identifying his dead body was the first time Hallie had seen him since then, and the irony of that situation hits her at on the second flight of stairs between her and her apartment on the third floor.

Gertrud peers at her over the stairwell and sniffles when she realizes her son hasn’t come home. Soon her sniffling escalates into melodramatic wailing. Hallie scuttles past the desolate crone to unlock her door, one hand turning the key in the lock and the other on the handle of her cleaver in case Gertrud tries to scratch her eyes out again for “seducing” Oswald with her “feminine wiles” and luring him away from his poor mother. As if she has time to seduce anyone when she works twelve hours all day, every day. As if she would ever seduce Oswald Cobblepot, of all people.

 _As if_ , Hallie thinks before she closes her door and locks it behind her. Then she kicks her shoes off and dials Connie as she flops onto her bed.

“Darius is dead,” Hallie informs her best friend.

“Good.” Connie yawns through the word because it’s half past three in the morning and Hallie literally gave her a wakeup call to tell her this exciting news.

Connie texts Ed when her shift at the library ends the next day, **I don’t think it was suicide.**

Ed responds, **What do you think?**

Connie practically hears his emphasis on the _do_ over text. **I think it can’t be a coincidence that a box from Maroni’s restaurant was found at the scene of their supposed triple suicide,** she texts back. **Falcone owns the cops so it must be in his best interest to cover up these murders despite his rivalry with Maroni. What I don’t know is why.**

 **I can probably solve that puzzle,** Ed replies, **if you participate and bring pizza.**

 **I’m in.** Connie sends him a grinning purple devilish emoji. Ed sends her a sunglasses emoji in return as if to say, _cool_.

Connie walks into the forensics lab Ed uses as his workspace with their favorite pizza: straight up cheese from the _Town & Country _a few blocks from the Old Gotham branch of the Gotham City Public Library where she works. Ed clears a space at one end of the autopsy table he repurposed as a makeshift desk during his lunch break and leaves an empty stool there for her. Connie puts the pizza box on the tabletop and smooths her skirt beneath her thighs as she sits, her fingers snarling like claws as the cold metal seat touches her skin through the sheer fabric of her stockings.

Ed looks down to deduce what caused the hiss she exhaled at the sensation and then looks away abruptly, heat rising from his throat to his cheeks. With her knees crossed like that, he can see the garter straps attached to the lace tops of her thigh-highs, the shiny black material a sharp contrast to her creamy skin and pink striae. There is a darker part of him that wants to curl his fingers into the flesh of her thighs and spread her legs to make space for him between them, but he squashes the absurd urge because she’s his best friend and he shouldn’t think of her that way.

Connie doesn’t notice his reaction because she’s too busy stealing the slice of pizza with the thickest crust and wolfing it down. “What?” she asks, her mouth pressing into a thin defensive line after she swallows her third bite. “I forgot my lunch this morning. Don’t judge me.”

Ed crosses his legs to hide his partial erection. “Does that mean you haven’t eaten today?” he asks because he knows she forgets to feed herself sometimes and he worries about her.

Connie nods, a slow descent of her chin, before she takes another bite of her pizza. “Don’t look at me like that,” she arches her eyebrows after she finishes chewing and points at him accusatorially, her slice dangling by its crust from the fingers of her other hand. “You subsist on takeout. You think half a cranberry muffin is a meal. Your unspoken argument is invalid.”

“You made the muffins,” Ed points out, “and they were delicious.”

“I had to use those cranberries for something,” Connie retorts after she finishes her slice of pizza. “Hallie found a bog when she explored the grounds last summer. I couldn’t just leave them out there to rot.”

Ed turns his notebook to the pages on the autopsy he performed on Darius and passes it to her before he grabs a slice. Connie licks her fingers clean to avoid getting sauce on the pages. Ed stops chewing and clenches his jaw while she reads through his notes, oblivious.

“Balmonté’s is Maroni’s ‘legitimate’ business,” she crooks her fingers like quotation marks around the word _legitimate_ , “so Falcone must have a wolf in sheep’s clothing there to spy on Maroni’s flock.”

“Did you rewatch _Veronica Mars_ again?” Ed grins knowingly at her as she opens a can of soda. “Whenever you do that, you talk like a detective in a noir film.”

Connie adjusts her glasses instead of trying to contradict the facts. “What’s the only word in the English language that has six letters all in alphabetical order?”

Ed thinks it through while Connie finishes her second piece of pizza. “Almost,” he answers.

“Yes.” Connie sips her soda.

“Guess what?” Ed grins wider.

Connie arches her eyebrows again instead of saying, _what?_

“There’s a new drug on the streets,” Ed informs her, excitement saturating the cadence of his voice. “It’s called Viper. It killed a man who stole a vending machine with his bare hands.”

Connie tilts her head owlishly and eyes a third slice of pizza like a predator watching its prey. “I have no idea where to start,” she sips her soda again to give herself time to articulate, “but maybe you shouldn’t be so gleeful about a drug with fatal consequences.”

“But it’s fascinating!” Ed protests. “I fed the dregs left in the vial found on the victim to a rat earlier and his skeletal system collapsed because his body was burning the calcium in his bones for fuel!”

“Ed,” Connie deadpans, “people died. You’re being inappropriate.”

Ed side-eyes her incredulously. “You called me at four in the morning to sing ‘Ding Dong, the douche is dead! Which douchebag? Darius! Ding Dong, the douchecanoe is dead.’ Then you hung up on me and went back to sleep.”

Connie shrugs, one shoulder hunching toward her earlobe. “I never said I wasn’t inappropriate,” she points out.

“You’re my favorite,” Ed tells her sincerely.

“I know.” Connie takes a long drink from her soda and burps in the aftermath, her belch smothered in her cupped palm.

* * *

Connie goes to Balmonté’s on her day off and realizes the restaurant manager—who introduces himself to her as Paolo—eerily resembles Hallie’s creepy neighbor whose mother is always slut-shaming her. Oswald tells Maroni his real name that afternoon. Gordon confirms his story after Maroni’s goons abduct him from the precinct and Oswald gets to keep his job at the restaurant. Connie texts Hallie, **I know who poisoned the douchecanoe. What I don’t know is why.**

Oswald returns home to his mother the next day. Ed removes one latex glove to use the touchscreen on his phone and texts Connie from the scene of the first copycat murder: **Both you and Eve are the firstborns of wealthy families. Which means you and your cousin fit the victim profile. Be careful.**

Kristen calls her in tears after he reconfigures her organizational system in the records annex against her explicit instructions. “I told him I had everything in the annex exactly as I wanted it and then I found him reorganizing my files,” her voice pitches higher as a frustrated noise crawls out of her throat. “Why is he so odd?”

Connie sighs. _Hallie and I are her only friends_ , she thinks, _and that wouldn’t have panned out if we didn’t live together in one room with three beds for all four years of undergrad_. Kristen prefers keeping to herself and then she became the kind of girl other girls love to hate in junior high. Between those aspects of her personality, she didn’t cultivate friendship until Hallie and Connie bothered her into it during their freshman year at GU.

Trouble is, a best friend isn’t a person, it’s a tier. Ed is her best friend, but so is Kristen—and so is Hallie, for that matter.

 _I hate the creepy way Ed treats Kristen_ , Connie thinks, _but my opinion is the opposite of unbiased_.

Which is why Kristen doesn’t talk to Connie about Ed under ordinary circumstances, but Hallie is at work so she can’t text or call her instead.

“I’m sorry,” Kristen exhales a sigh of her own, “I know you don’t like being put in the middle of this.”

“I’m sorry Ed is such a creep when it comes to girls he likes,” Connie retorts. “I’ll tell him what he did wrong if you want.”

“Yes.” Kristen nods, the spiral curl of her ponytail bouncing softly against her peter pan collar. “Nygma will listen to you,” she closes the drawer of a filing cabinet with a satisfying amount of force, “he doesn’t listen to me.”

Connie is glad Kristen can’t see her over the phone because she can feel herself smiling. “Ed is a weird amalgamation of arrogance and awkwardness,” she explains, “and he’s the worst at women. I’ve been friends with him for twelve years and sometimes he still freaks out when he sees me without pants.”

Kristen giggles because she knows Connie refuses to wear pants if she doesn’t plan on leaving the house. “Do you still have those horrible granny panties?” she asks even though she knows the answer.

“Hell yes,” Connie retorts, “they’re comfy as fuck.”

Connie and Ed carpool to work most days because the library is six blocks from the precinct. Ed bought his car when they were in high school and left it in a storage unit after he went to Seattle for grad school. Connie named it Grendel, after the monster from _Beowulf_. Ed prefers to think of it as a classic. Connie drives a green Tesla roadster, imported from Europe after she gained access to her trust fund on her twenty-first birthday. Eve calls it a midlife crisis car. Ed has no idea how it hasn’t been carjacked from the employee parking lot at the library yet.

“Kristen called me in tears earlier today.” Connie keeps her eyes on the road. “I want you to know the only reason I’m not smacking you upside the head for that is because your dad used to beat the crap out of you. I’ve told you both not to put me in the middle of this nonsense more than once, but here we are with me betwixt and between, goddammit.”

“I didn’t mean to be inappropriate with Miss Kringle,” Ed protests. “I was trying to help.”

Connie exhales a sharp _ugh_ that feels like a sucker punch to him. “Kristen didn’t want your help,” she bites down on the consonants at the ends of _want_ and _help_ , “but you didn’t listen because you wanted to impress her with your non-hierarchical data paradigms.”

“You’re not wrong,” Ed says in a small voice.

Connie takes one hand off of the wheel and gives his shoulder a gentle, perfunctory squeeze. “I get that you think leaving notes and suggestions and riddles for Kristen is wooing,” she says, “but your subtlety is strangling her. Also, she has a new boyfriend. Again.”

Kristen always has a boyfriend. Ed persists in hoping that he’ll be her boyfriend in the future.

“Don’t lean in and sniff her.” Connie brakes at a red light and side-eyes him because overtly sniffing a girl who is neither your girlfriend nor receptive to your advances is gross. “Don’t be creepy. Kristen deserves better.”

Ed nods as the light turns green, his glasses slipping down his nose in his enthusiasm. “I can do better,” he says fervently.

Connie tilts her head owlishly to look at him before she hits the gas with her stocking foot, her oxford heels toed off at the stoplight. “Prove it,” she retorts.

* * *

Hallie goes to Balmonté’s an hour before her shift at the diner starts and orders a box of cannoli to go. Oswald pales when he realizes she recognizes him.

“Thank you,” she says after he shoos a server into the kitchen to assemble her order.

“For what?” Oswald grimaces at her, his polite façade slipping as he gnashes his teeth.

“For killing my brother.” Hallie offers him a fistbump and he gives her hand the stinkeye. As if she flipped him off or pulled a gun on him instead. _Rude_ , she thinks. “Darius needed killing,” she elaborates. “I should’ve done it myself a long time ago.” At that, she takes her cannoli and eats the whole box while she waits for the next bus to Old Gotham.

 _Square Diner_ is located upon a convergent point near the M. C. U., the G. C. P. D., the D. A., the best three law firms in the city, and the courthouse. Most of their regular customers are cops or lawyers. There are six shifts available to keep the restaurant open 24/7: the breakfast shift from six in the morning until noon, the brunch shift from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, the lunch shift from two in the afternoon until eight at night, the dinner shift from six at night until midnight, the late shift from ten at night until four in the morning, and the graveyard shift from two in the morning until eight in the morning. Hallie started working the dinner shift, switched to the breakfast shift in college, and wound up working double shifts regularly after she graduated.

There is a lady wearing a bustier with a pair of shiny faux leather shorts that squeak when she moves, waiting at the bus stop and towering over her in stiletto boots. It’s fuck off o’clock in the morning, so Hallie groans when the lady makes a show of drawing a butterfly knife. Then she reaches for the cleaver she keeps in her messenger bag during her shifts at the diner and resigns herself to cleaning blood out of her waitress uniform. It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last.

Victor Zsasz gets his henchwoman back minus her pinkie toes later that morning with a note scrawled in black ink on a blue post-it that reads _I’ll take her nose and make her eat it next time_.

There’s a little bird drawn beneath the message in place of a signature. Hallie intends for it to be a kingfisher, a halcyon bird. Oswald mistakes it for a lark.


	3. A True Monster Will Be Remembered for the Shock It Produces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 1x07 (“Penguin’s Umbrella”) and 1x12 (“What the Little Bird Told Him”).

**In a male-supremacist society, female power must logically appear illogical, mysterious, intimate, threatening. “Witch” stands for all those unnamable shadow acts of disappearance and withdrawal, self-cultivation and self-medication, that elude the social and sexual order.**

**In serving as an effigy of everything that must burn, the witch takes on a dizzying number of meanings: She is action at a distance and she is an addict; she is ambition or enchantment but also incantation and melancholic attachment; she is both a Mercedes Elegance and artisanal production. She is beauty itself, and she is left over. She is resourceful, cunning, practical, and she stands for excess, obscenity, and repetition compulsion. She is female friendship and solidarity, but also inscrutable solitude, banishment, and exile. She is a succubus but a withered crone. She is such a woman that she isn’t.**

_The New Inquiry, Vol. 21 Editors’ Note: Witches_

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 2**  
A True Monster Will Be Remembered for the Shock It Produces

* * *

**III**

In _Thesaurus Artificiosae Memoriae_ (1579), Cosmas Rossellius describes a memory theatre that contains an all-inclusive category, suggesting that _any_ monster of _any_ sort may be used to signify _any_ thing whatsoever, through totally idiosyncratic associations. We might supplement this axiom with its converse: a true monster will be remembered for the shock it produces, breaking all chains of association.

* * *

Connie meets Ed at the precinct for lunch on the same day Oswald publically resurrects himself to save Gordon from being arrested for murder. Victor Zsasz instigates a shootout while they’re in the forensics lab downstairs. Kristen is in the records annex upstairs, close enough to hear the gunshots. Flass is kissing her up against one of the filing cabinets when the shots are fired, but he puts his hand up her skirt instead of going to investigate the noise. Kristen doesn’t call him on it because he starts fingering her through her panties. This, in hindsight, is the moment she probably should’ve realized he was corrupt, but they had just started dating and she was busy having a really good orgasm.

Oswald murders Frankie Carbone the next day. Hallie returns home to find him waiting for her on the staircase. “Is that blood on your shirt?” she wants to know.

When he looks down in distress to check his shirtfront and his cuffs for bloodstains, Hallie draws her cleaver and presses it near his jugular so a thin red line trickles onto his white collar.

“I’m not a loose end for you to tie up,” she informs him. “I won’t tell my uncle you killed my brother. I doubt Yízhàng Ekin would retaliate against Maroni or Falcone because he hated Darius as much as I did, but I don’t want to start a mob war if I’m wrong.”

“What?” Oswald gulps audibly, the noise reeling along the column of his pale throat.

Hallie rolls her eyes. “Yízhàng is Mandarin for uncle,” she explains, “specifically my mother’s sister’s husband. Which is how I’m related to the daailóu of the Lucky Hands Triad.”

Oswald is only privy to the dealings of the Italian, Irish, and Russian mob because those families make a herculean effort to leave the yakuza and the triads alone.

“Holy red sun cows of Apollo.” Hallie squeaks with laughter and covers her mouth with the hand that isn’t holding the blade of her cleaver along his neck. “You didn’t know Darius was his wàishēng.”

“I suppose that means ‘nephew’ in Mandarin?” Oswald says haughtily.

“Yeah,” Hallie nods, “but I don’t need my uncle or his underlings to protect me. I’ll slit your throat myself if you send another dominatrix after me at fuck off o’clock in the morning. Got it?”

Oswald has only gotten this hard this fast once before, when Gordon grabbed him by his lapel and threatened him with a negligible distance between their faces. “Understood,” he nods slowly and hisses at the bite of her blade into the flesh of his neck.

“Good.” Hallie nods in return and sheathes her cleaver. Then she makes her way up three flights of stairs to her apartment. Oswald waddles after her and waits by his door until he hears the telltale click of her deadbolt.

 _I need more information. Love conquers all_ , he thinks as he unpins his tie and unbuttons the shirt to keep his mother from noticing the bloodstain Hallie left behind. _What does she love?_

* * *

Ed does another illicit autopsy on a man in a suit killed with office supplies before he texts Connie, **I found a severed finger in the mouth of the victim and connected his death to four other corpses found in the last three years.**

Connie checks her messages on her lunch break and responds with a high five emoji because she has no idea what else to say. Ed loves his job, and she loves that about him, but his enthusiastic response to severed fingers and lethal drugs is pretty odd. _Then again_ , she thinks. _There’s a jar in my fridge with a pair of severed pinkie toes inside. I have no room to judge him_.

* * *

Harvey comes home elated one night, presses Eve against the front door of their townhouse, and kisses her so thoroughly she whimpers as he moves his mouth from her lips to her neck. “I found a witness to the Wayne murders,” he grins at her almost manically. “I’m going to use this witness against Lovecraft. It’s all set in motion now. I’ve got him,” he slants his mouth over hers again with a hunger that probably has something to do with their mutual decision to wait until they’re married to have sex even though they’re living together in the meantime.

Eve can feel the hard length of his cock against her through their clothes, his pupils blown with arousal and adrenaline. Harvey goes to church every Sunday, says grace over every meal, and prays before they go to sleep every night, but he accepts her for who and what she is without condemnation despite his faith in a higher power.

“I want to fuck you against the door,” he says hoarsely, “or maybe bend you over the kitchen counter even though you burn water and we agreed you’re not allowed in the kitchen ever again. I need you to say no right now.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Eve raises one eyebrow in a wordless provocation she meticulously cultivated in the mirror as a teenager.

Harvey leans down so his forehead touches hers and puts his forearms on either side of her face, his hands pressed flat against the door while he catches his breath. “I threatened to rip Lovecraft open,” he pulls back to look her in the eyes. “Although he did threaten me first.”

Eve nuzzles the hollow under his jaw with her nose, her thighs clenching at the sensation of the stubble growing in along his jawline against her skin. “Nobody will ever find the body,” she promises solemnly.

Harvey clenches his jaw around a frustrated groan and pulls back to grin at her again. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Arkham Asylum reopens the next day. Lovecraft is shot by one of the assassins hired to kill the witness to the Wayne murders a day after that. Philippa Howard, Lovecraft’s mistress, is found dead at a condo in Stevensburg he owns under her name. Harvey and Eve find Pippa dead on her bathroom floor with a bullet hole in her temple, her bleach blonde hair splattered with congealing blood.

“I think we need Connie.” Harvey turns to look at Eve as she squats next to Pippa’s corpse and closes her eyes with her fingertips. “I know one of the assassins probably got to her, but maybe she knows something useful about Lovecraft.”

Eve puts one hand on the counter and renegotiates herself gracelessly into a standing position.

Harvey supports her with his palm on the small of her back. “I adore you,” he gives her a fond smile that clashes with the murder scene in the room.

“As you should.” Eve unsnaps her handbag and extracts her phone from the inside pocket before she dials Connie.

Connie stops organizing books at the buzzing from the depths of her purse. “I’m at work,” she answers, holding the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she continues rearranging the books on her shelving cart.

“I need extraordinary measures for something that involves blood.” Eve examines her fingernails, which are painted a shade of red with a touch of blue called Leading Lady, while Harvey watches her. “I’d do it myself if I could.”

“Would if I could,” Connie deadpans, “but I can’t, so I shan’t.” Eve side-eyes her so hard she actually feels it over the phone. Connie sighs. “Where are you?”

It takes an hour to get from Old Gotham to Stevensburg in light traffic. Connie gets there in forty-five minutes and tilts her head owlishly when she notices the revolver Eve has holstered beneath her blazer, which is a shade of pale raspberry pink.

“What?” Eve arches one eyebrow again. “I have a permit.”

Connie acknowledges her cousin’s fiancée with a nod. Harvey smiles at her without showing his teeth. Eve gesticulates toward the dead woman like a magician’s assistant hyping up the next trick onstage. Connie kneels on the floor next to the body, strokes one fingertip through the blood pooling by the hole in her skull, brings her hand to her lips and licks the blood from her finger to flip through Pippa’s memories like the pages of a book.

“Why didn’t she just do this to learn who killed Hallie’s brother?” Harvey wants to know.

“We’re witches,” Eve flips a froth of blonde curls over her shoulder. “We’re not immune to strychnine.”

* * *

Connie plants hills of squash over the summer that start ripening the week of her twenty-sixth birthday. “Hell yes,” she looks over the hills of squash and hums excitedly as she tugs her lower lip between her teeth. “I’m going to make so many soups,” she informs Ed.

Ed grins at her as she fiddles with her glasses and adjusts his own spectacles. “You grew a variety of acorn squash called Snow White.”

“I also grew a kind of acorn squash called Ebony,” she grins back. “And three kinds of butternut squash. And two kinds of delicata. And pink banana squash. And a variety of winter squash called Sweetmeat. I’m going to make so many soups,” she jumps up and down a few times in a pair of overlarge rubber boots that squelch in protest when she lands wonkily, “so many.”

Ed has to lift the pink banana squash into the wagon with two arms because it weighs twenty-seven pounds. After they harvest a wagonload full of ripe squash, he pushes while Connie walks backward and pulls.

“Why,” he huffs and wipes sweat off his forehead with his sleeve because his gloved hands are caked with dirt from digging up squash and handling their vines with care. “Why am I helping you again?”

Connie folds her arms and tilts her head back to look up at him. Ed has always been taller than her. Connie didn’t resent him for it until his shoulders got higher than the very top of her head. “Because people who don’t help out with the harvest don’t get to eat my delicious soups,” she deadpans. “Or my pumpkin chocolate chip banana bread. Or carve my pumpkins. Which you love.”

“Speaking of other people helping with the harvest,” Ed is breathing harder than he’s proud of when he flatly refuses to let Connie pull the empty wagon back to the hills. “I thought Hallie was supposed to be here.”

“Hallie couldn’t afford to take two days off in a row,” Connie would sit in the wagon if she didn’t want to hurt his arms, “but she’ll be here tomorrow for my birthday party and Aunt Torrie’s masked ball. I wish she would move in with us because then she could save the money she uses to pay rent along with the rest of her paycheck that doesn’t get spent on living expenses. I’d give her millions if she’d let me.”

“Where are my millions?” Ed wants to know.

Connie rolls her eyes at him. “Ed,” he groans when she gently elbows him in the ribs, “you’re one of the four people I love the most in the world. If you think our friendship isn’t worth millions, I’ll write you into my will tonight and notarize it tomorrow.”

Ed doesn’t respond until they reach another hill to harvest. “What’s bare in the winter and covered in the summer?” he asks.

“Trees,” Connie answers as she picks a tiny white pumpkin from a nearby patch and tucks it into the pocket of her sweater.

“Don’t write me into your will.” Ed collapses on the back staircase after they finish hauling their fourth wagonload and wheezes vehemently, “I refuse to imagine my future without you.”

Connie sits a step above Ed and puts a tiny orange pumpkin on his knee. “Hallie is going to help me cook tomorrow before the masquerade,” she informs him. “Which she’s better at than harvesting because her dad’s a chef. Eve is a human disaster in the kitchen,” she pulls her glove off to muss his sweaty hair. “Which is why she’s banned for life.”

Ed holds the pumpkin in both hands, swallowing the ripe gourd with his palms, his fingers arching over it. “Miss Kringle is coming, isn’t she?”

“Kristen will be here.” Connie stops touching his hair and he mourns the loss of contact. “Flass is picking her up and escorting her to the masquerade.”

“So,” Ed frowns, “they’re still together.”

Connie sighs and squashes the urge to stick a knife in one of the pumpkins she grew for carving. _I have no one to blame for this but myself_ , she thinks. “Yes they are,” she says out loud before she riddles him this: “You can feel it, but can’t touch it. You can hear it, but can’t see it. What is it?”

Ed closes his eyes, his glasses fogging up from the heat of his breath as the fallen leaves stir. “Wind,” he answers.

“Yes.” Connie inhales the smell of freshly overturned earth clinging to the bare skin of her forearms, above where the cuffs of her gloves were. If he weren’t here, she wouldn’t have bothered to wear gloves at all. Instead she would’ve called her crops out of the soil and it would have yielded them to her because this place is hers. Connie bled in the dirt to claim the land and over the threshold so this house will remember her long after she is gone.

Connie has kept two secrets from Ed. The first is what she is: a kitchen witch, a hemomancer, a freak of nature. The second is that she loves him—which he knows—except he has no idea how much.

* * *

Eve, Hallie, and Kristen come to Newgrange on Halloween to celebrate Connie’s birthday with her before the obligatory masquerade. Eve picks up their costumes from _Harlequin_ , the shop in Brooklyn where they order their costumes for the masked ball every year. Hallie works the breakfast shift instead of the graveyard shift that morning and steals a whole cheesecake from the diner. Kristen brings potato and cabbage pierogis, like her grandmother used to make. There is a pot of butternut squash soup simmering on the stove and baskets of assorted vegetables festooned over the kitchen counter; the granite island in the center of the room is covered in newspaper topped with pumpkins for carving and bowls for their guts.

Connie disembowels and carves a pumpkin using a pattern for a grinning jack-o’-lantern called “Demi” because she’s demisexual and cannot pass up a good pun. Eve puts on elbow length rubber gloves to protect her manicure before she carves a grinning jack-o’-lantern of her own from from a pattern called “Bat Cave” because the eyes and nose eerily resemble a bat spreading its wings. Ed carves his pumpkin with a large question mark surrounded by smaller question marks. Kristen carves a cartoon giraffe into her pumpkin before she picks the seeds out of their collective pumpkin guts and washes them in the sink.

Eve reaches for the lid covering the pot of soup after her cousin finishes her fifth pierogi and leaves the kitchen to pee.

“Don’t even think about it,” Connie deadpans from the other end of the hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom, “you burned your hand last time because you didn’t use a potholder.”

“Actually,” Ed finishes carving out his last question mark with a tiny saw, “she left the potholder too close to the burner last time and it caught on fire,” he adjusts his glasses with both hands and a string of pumpkin goop snags between the hinge above his left eye and the frame, “she burned her hand the time before that.”

Kristen reaches out to grab the goop before it gets in his hair. Ed goes rigid as she removes his glasses to check the hinge for residue. Connie returns just in time to watch him flush because his fingers brush Kristen’s when she gives his glasses back.

Eve gives Hallie a significant look. Hallie rolls her eyes in return and goes to extract the cheesecake from the fridge.

Flass eventually calls Kristen from his car because the GPS on his phone failed to locate Newgrange. Harvey arrives to drive Eve and their costumes to her parents’ manor in Kane County. Flass practically drags Kristen out the door. Ed folds himself into the backseat of Connie’s roadster because Hallie calls shotgun.

Their costumes were chosen in homage to mythology this year. Kristen is Hervör-Alvitr, a Valkyrie in a swanskin from the Norse epic _Völundarkviða_. Flass is the eponymous Völundr, who stole her swanskin and forced her to marry him. Eve is dressed as Freyja, the Norse goddess of love, beauty, sexuality, prosperity, war, and death. Harvey and Ed are Odin’s ravens: Huginn, who epitomizes thought, and Muninn, who embodies memory. Connie is dressed as Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and courage. Hallie is Zhu Què, a fire elemental from Chinese mythology who rules the twenty-eight constellations in the south. Ed looks at the feathered epaulettes on his shoulders and grins at the thought of Kristen’s relationship with Flass taking after Hervör-Alvitr and Völundr with her leaving him for Valhalla while he gets hamstrung and enslaved by a tyrannical king.

Völundr also murders the princes, impregnates the princess, and flies away laughing at the end of the poem, but he doubts Flass would be so lucky because all of his luck was likely spent getting Kristen to go out with him.

Eventually he ends up occupying an antique chair in one corner of the ballroom watching Kristen dance with Flass. Hallie is dragging someone dressed like an emperor penguin onto the balcony and shooing the people fooling around out there back into the ballroom. Eve and her fiancée are nowhere to be seen. Ed tugs on the cuffs of his dress shirt so they’re visible below the sleeves of his suit jacket and chugs a flute of expensive champagne in one gulp. Connie doesn’t pull him onto the dancefloor like she always has before. Instead she’s in the arms of a man in a mask that Ed doesn’t know.

It looks like Connie knows him, though. Ed grimaces because the darkest part of him detests the idea of her with anyone. It’s totally unfair, but Connie has been a significant part of his life since he was a first grader. Ed knows he would lose her if she ever fell in love with someone and that’s inconceivable.

* * *

Oswald plans to crash the masquerade before he gets preoccupied with the Liza debacle, which is why he has a costume ready and waiting on the night of the ball. Hallie is draped over a swooning couch with her heels kicked off, her toenails painted a deep shade of burgundy, dark brown freckles dusting the golden skin of her calves. There is another girl seated very close beside her with a hand on her thigh through the vermillion fabric of her dress, which makes him wonder if she’s exclusively attracted to women or whether her sexuality is a moving target as well.

Hallie pushes her mask up onto her forehead, its firebird beak curving in a caricature of a unicorn horn while its bright red feathers stand out against her auburn hair. Oswald waves to her, his grin visible beneath his own mask. Hallie hooks the straps of her heels over the fingers of one gloved hand and uses the other to pull him around the edges of the ballroom to the balcony.

There is a couple _in flagrante_ against the railing with most of their clothes still on. “Really?” Hallie folds her arms as one dude pulls up his pants and the other hastily zips his open fly shut. “I hope you didn’t carry that condom around in your back pocket,” she says, “because the friction from your movement wears holes that render the point of using protection moot whether you’re fucking a lady or another dude.” At that, she gives them her best stinkeye until they leave her alone on a balcony with her creepy neighbor who murdered her brother with poisoned cannoli and sent a mercenary to kill her.

“Alone at last.” Oswald removes his mask and smiles at her.

“Are you armed?” Hallie wants to know.

“Yes.” Oswald thinks of the switchblade in his pocket and licks his lips before he asks, “Are you?”

“Always,” Hallie retorts. “I thought we established that I’m not a threat. What more do you want from me?”

“I want more information,” Oswald informs her. “I like information. For example, your brother owed Don Falcone a debt of twelve thousand dollars. Right now your uncle the daailóu is the only thing standing between Don Falcone taking what he’s owed from your family. If he were somehow persuaded to step aside...”

Hallie drops her shoes to press him back against the railing with her forearm crushing his windpipe and her cleaver slicing through the fabric of his dress shirt over his stomach. “I have spent the past three and a half years living across the hall from you and your mother,” she says in a deadly calm voice, “whenever you stay out all night doing whatever it is that you do for Falcone, or Maroni, or whoever you’re working for, she waits on the third floor landing at fuck off o’clock in the morning for me and screams that I’m a harlot seducing her son away from his mother. If you want to threaten my family, that’s fine. If you hurt the people I love, I’ll gut your mother like a fish and feed her cheeks to you. Got it?”

Oswald wants to gut her like a fish for threatening his mother. At the same time, he laments the distance between their hips.

“What do you want to know?” Hallie reduces the pressure on his windpipe to let him answer her question.

Oswald takes advantage, using an arm and a leg to knock her cleaver out of her grasp before he pins her wrists above her head with one hand and traps her against the wall with his whole body. “I want to know everything,” he says.

Hallie slides her thigh in between his and wipes the smug look off his face when she knees him in the groin. Then she kicks him in the shin of his bad leg and scoops up her cleaver while he makes a strangled noise in his throat and falls to one knee before her. “Did you know that emperor penguins bow to each other before they have sex?” she asks as she sweeps his calf out from under him.

Oswald ends up on his back with his knees bent and the air shaken loose from his lungs. “No,” he wheezes. “I suppose you learn something new every day.”

Hallie lifts her skirt to strap her cleaver into the sheath on her thigh before she leans down to pick up her shoes.

“Halcyon Meifeng Larkin.” Oswald snarls her full name. “You were born at three in the afternoon on Valentine’s Day in 1988. You got a job waitressing at the _Square Diner_ in 2004. You attended Gotham Academy on a performing arts scholarship from 2002 to 2006. You graduated summa cum laude from Gotham University in 2010. Your mother is Maisie Larkin, née Huang. Your aunt Margaret Tzu, née Huang, is married to Ekin Tzu, the leader of the Lucky Hands Triad. Your father Dorian Larkin owns the _Golden Dragon_ restaurant in Chinatown and he makes the best crab rangoon I’ve ever tasted. Your great-grandfather Longwei Feng opened the restaurant in 1906. Your dearly departed brother put you in the hospital at least once a year until you filed a restraining order against him in 2007. You have perfect pitch. You were in the drama club at Gotham Academy and Gotham University. You played Betty Rizzo in _Grease_ , Cinderella in _Into the Woods_ , Lola in _Damn Yankees_ , Chiffon in _Little Shop of Horrors_ , Lulu in _Cabaret_ , Anita in _West Side Story_ , Éponine Thénardier in _Les Misérables_ , and a merry murderess in _Chicago_. I gathered all of that information before I became preoccupied with another woman—”

“Congratulations.” Hallie looks down her nose at him. “Introduce her to your mom so she won’t call me a hussy when I don’t even date.”

Oswald giggles at the thought of Fish’s spy meeting his mother. Hallie walks away and leaves him there on the ground, trembling with breathless laughter.


	4. Each Monster Exists in a Class by Itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 1x13 (“Welcome Back, Jim Gordon”) and 1x16 (“The Blind Fortune Teller”).

**Whereas he believed life, any life, was a curious adventure, and if you merely kept your wits about you and stayed alert and in motion, you could find your way to a satisfactory conclusion.**

Toby Barlow, _Babayaga: A Novel of Witches in Paris_

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
**Part 3**  
Each Monster Exists in a Class by Itself

* * *

**IV**

The logic of monsters is one of particulars, not essences. Each monster exists in a class by itself. Monsters may, however, generate entire classes of beings.

* * *

Vincenzo Gigante is found dead in his apartment with a bullet in his brain the morning after the masquerade. Connie wakes up to a phone call from a detective with the major crimes unit who asks her to come by and answer a few questions regarding a homicide. Which is how she ends up in an interrogation room with Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen, her partner in fighting a losing battle with crime, on her lunch break.

“Where were you last night?” Montoya asks.

“At the masked ball my aunt gives every year on my birthday.” Connie gnaws the nail attached to her left forefinger without biting through it. “There are five hundred guests who can confirm that. Torrance Gold—my aunt—will send you the guest list if you need it.”

“When did you arrive?” Allen wants to know.

Connie tilts her head owlishly as she thinks it over. “Half past seven,” she answers.

Montoya leans forward in her chair and stares her down, a telltale intimidation tactic. “Where were you before that?”

“At my house,” Connie says, “with my cousin and my best friends. I can give you their names and their contact information.”

“When did you last see Vincenzo Gigante?” Allen asks.

 _Vincenzo must be dead_ , Connie deduces as a warmth faintly tinged with guilt unfurls in her chest like a rosebush, _my rapist is dead_. “When a judge and jury found him not guilty of raping me,” she squares her shoulders despite the tension taking root in them. “Which happened nine years ago. I didn’t kill him.”

“See, that’s interesting.” Montoya puts her elbows on the interrogation table. “I never said he was dead.”

Connie snorts. “You’re homicide detectives,” she points out. “You called me in for questioning. It’s not a stretch to assume someone got murdered. I understand if I’m a suspect. Especially since it happened so long ago, because revenge is a dish best served cold or whatever.” At that moment, the knowledge of who shot her rapist hits her like a speeding bullet. Connie fists one hand in the fabric of her skirt while her lips gape open a bit and her eyes go wide behind her glasses.

“You know something.” Allen narrows his eyes at her.

“Carmine Falcone has oodles of enemies,” Connie retorts, “one of them probably murdered his grandson to send a message. I didn’t kill Vincenzo and I don’t know who did. I couldn’t help you if I wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to help us,” Montoya bites down accusatorially on the _t_ at the end of the word _don’t_ , “do you, Miss Crowley?”

“Vincenzo followed me upstairs at a party,” Connie says flatly, “he made a failed attempt to kiss me and I hit my head when I tried to get away. I blacked out,” she exhales sharply, “and he was inside me when I woke up. I could feel my own blood warm on my thighs and cold on the fabric of my cotillion dress. I was sixteen, but I survived. What he did was unforgivable, and I’ll never forget it, but it’s in the past. Vincenzo isn’t worth my present or my future.”

Connie returns to her car after they release her and drives three blocks away before she calls Eve, puts the phone on speaker, and slants it into the empty cup holder above her gearshift. “I know what you did,” her shoulders hunch when she sighs. If she’s right, her cousin is a serial killer.

“Last summer?” Eve quips.

“No.” Connie shakes her head before she remembers Eve can’t see her. “Last night.”

Eve is nursing a hangover one second and occupying the passenger seat of Connie’s roadster the next. “Okay,” she holds up her hands in mock surrender, “I know this looks bad—”

Connie takes one hand off the wheel and holds it up as if to say, _stop_. Eve closes her mouth and starts combing her tanged, messy curls with her fingers. “It looks like you became a serial killer because you blame yourself for dragging me to a party where I got raped by a douchecanoe who happened to be the heir to a mafia empire! It looks like you murdered thirty-three people because of me—”

“I only shot eleven people,” Eve protests. Connie takes her eyes off the road to give her an incredulous look. “Harvey killed Maroni’s henchmen,” Eve informs her, “and we didn’t kill Hallie’s granduncle the gunsmith. I have no idea who did that.”

Connie knows Harvey’s father was a cop who refused to do a favor for Maroni, who in turn set his house on fire for his trouble. Lucy, his mother, and Murray, his twin brother, died in the conflagration that ensued. Christopher, his father, shot himself in the head after that. “Harvey’s in on this?” she asks in the aftermath of a silence that stretches out between them.

“Of course.” Eve flips her hair. “I wouldn’t become a serial killer without telling my fiancée.”

Connie laughs despite herself, hunching over the steering wheel at a stop sign with her foot on the brake until a car behind them honks three times and she pulls herself together.

Eve crosses one knee over the other and points her toes to pop the joints in her foot. “How did you figure it out?”

Connie shrugs. “Vincenzo died on my birthday. It wasn’t a stretch to think you might be responsible. Especially after I made you take a blood oath not to use magic against him.” If a witch breaks a blood oath, the blowback is bloodcurdling. If a witch breaks a blood oath with a hemomancer, the consequences are a fate worse than death. “Of course you found a loophole,” she huffs with a hint of scorn, “you’re a lawyer.”

“I wish you would’ve let me put a curse on him.” Eve folds her arms as she slouches in her seat, rebelling against perfect posture in a passive-aggressive manner.

“I know,” Connie heaves another sigh, “me too.”

* * *

Hallie calls in sick for the first time in years and goes to see Connie at Newgrange. “I need twelve grand,” she cuts to the chase, “no questions asked.”

“I have so many questions.” Connie flails one hand and waves away the second part of her request. “What for? Why now? Are you in some kind of trouble with your uncle and his ilk? Are you putting a down payment on a house or a condo? Are you finally buying yourself a car instead of taking the bus everywhere?”

“You were right.” Hallie refuses to answer those questions because none of them are relevant. “Qǐé killed Darius. After a series of unfortunate events involving a dominatrix assassin trying to eviscerate me with a butterfly knife—”

Connie holds up one finger to confirm a hypothesis. “Are those her toes in my fridge?” she asks.

Hallie nods. “Qǐé crashed your party to tell me that my brother owed twelve grand in gambling debt to Falcone’s casino and threaten my family. I want to pay the debt so it won’t be hanging over my head like the motherfucking Sword of Damocles.”

Connie tilts her head owlishly, pressing her cheek to her shoulder in thought. “If you give me a routing number, I can wire twelve grand into your checking account.”

“I thought so.” Hallie peels a blue post-it from the top of the stack she keeps in her bag and hands it over.

“Awesome.” Connie accesses her own bank account, using an app on her phone to transfer the money then and there. “I have no idea how much you’re allowed to withdraw from an ATM at once,” she plugs her phone back into the charger on her kitchen counter and goes to check on the cookies in the oven. “If you’re going to do the dramatic briefcase full of cash thing. Which, in my opinion, you totally should.”

“Did you rewatch _Veronica Mars_ again?” Hallie wants to know.

Connie puts on an oven mitt stitched to look like a tyrannosaurus rex and gnaws on the thumbnail of her other hand without biting through it as the timer counts down from one minute. “Yes,” she turns the timer off before she puts on the other mitt and takes two sheets of oatmeal cookies out of the oven. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace the melodrama of the situation. Hell, you’re clandestinely meeting the man who killed your brother to pay a debt he owed to a mafia boss prior to his gruesome death. Why not have some fun while you’re at it?”

Hallie lets Connie hold the briefcase full of cash until she gives it to Oswald later that day. It’s mostly to curb her draconic urge to hoard the money with the rest of her treasures, as is her nature. Even the fúcánglóng in her agrees that his feathers ruffling when she arrives with someone in her corner is priceless.

Oswald expected a pretty, lonesome bird. Instead he got a dragon with a witch or two on her side.

“Hello, Miss Crowley.” Oswald gives Connie a smile that’s so obviously fake it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. “I see you have a patron as well, Halcyon.”

Hallie laughs, raucous and unapologetic, her shoulders quaking with it.

Connie snorts, her nostrils flaring. “If that’s what you think,” she tucks one hand in the pocket of her sweater, “then you’ve got another think coming, emperor fuckboy. I’m not her patron.” Connie offers Hallie her elbow. Hallie presses her forehead against Connie’s shoulder as her laughter returns with a vengeance, muffling tattered wheezes in the sturdy yarn of Connie’s sleeve. “I’m her best friend. Which is something you know nothing about.”

Oswald straightens his spine and puffs his chest out, using his idea of good posture as a defense mechanism. “I have friends,” he insists.

 _Ladies and gentlemen_ , Hallie thinks while the cadence of her breathing slows to a manageable rhythm, _presenting Oswald Cobblepot: emperor fuckboy!_

Connie scoffs, derision moving through her belly in a quick gust as she exhales. “I hate to burst your bubble,” she adjusts her glasses to meet his gaze, “but the detective you have a crush on who pushed you in the river instead of putting a bullet in your brain doesn’t count.”

Oswald forces himself not to flinch. “How do you know about that?” he snarls.

“I’m a witch,” Connie deadpans. It’s the truth. Hallie made him bleed and a drop of his blood told her everything she needed to know about him. Including things she never wanted to know, like how he does the weirdest stuff with ice cubes and that his mother apparently gives him sponge baths.

It’s blatantly obvious he doesn’t believe her because he glowers in retort and waddles away, his goons dogging his uneven footsteps.

Oswald spends the night in a holding cell at the precinct a week later because his eyes got too big for his stomach and he pissed Maroni off. Gertrud blames Hallie and gasps when she flips her off with one hand while she unlocks her door with the other.

“Oriental hussy!” Gertrud shrieks from the hallway.

Hallie is too exhausted to be offended by that until she wakes up the next morning. There is a loose scale on the inside of her wrist that itches something fierce. Hallie picks it off and drops it into the jar on her bedside table with the others. Eventually the skin at the nape of her neck, a line of scaly flesh along her spine to the dimple just above the cleft of her ass, the knobs of her elbows, the hollows of her knees, and the insides of her wrists will shed completely like a snake does. Connie gets the discarded scales; Eve gets the dead skin. Hallie really doesn’t want to know what they use them for.

 _Witches are weird_ , she thinks as she steps into the shower and sighs at the sensation of hot water sizzling on her skin. _Dragons_ , she decides as steam rises in thick plumes around her, _make way more sense_.

* * *

Ed asks Connie to help him bake red velvet cupcakes for Kristen. Connie doesn’t have the heart to tell him no even though it breaks hers a little. If he bothered to tell her that he was going to ruin the sweets of her labor with a live bullet, she would have straight up refused. Kitchen witchery is a kind of alchemy. All cooking and baking is, really, because it’s essentially transmutation. Ingredients combine to become something new. Chemicals react. Matter changes form. Squash becomes soup. Flour and eggs and butter and sugar become a cake. There is power in making one thing out of another. For her cooking and baking is thaumaturgy, working a wonder. Ergo, wasting her food is pretty much profane.

Connie shatters a crystal glass bowl she never uses for anything other than decoration after he explains his riddle to her— _the cupcake is sweet, the bullet is deadly; a beautiful woman is a dangerous thing_ —and spells it back together again when she calms down later that night. If he notices, she’ll tell Ed the bowl she broke was part of a set even though it’s one of a kind.

“You told me to do better,” Ed protests when he tells her what happened in the aftermath, “but I thought calling her beautiful out of the blue might be creepy. Actions speak louder than words. It’s a cliché for a reason.”

“Women aren’t things,” Connie informs him so harshly he recoils at the edge in her voice. “Kristen isn’t a thing. I’m not a thing,” she exhales a sigh and softens her tone, “and neither is Eve, or Hallie, or any of the girls you’ve liked in the twelve years I’ve known you. I think you should use your words unless she gives you permission to take action.”

Ed gives Kristen a greeting card two days later. Flass mocks him after he finds it in her desk. Ed texts Connie: **What could she possibly see in that gorilla?**

Connie knows he won’t like the answer. Flass is amazing in bed, according to Kristen. Except they rarely do it on a bed. Kristen likes that he can lift her up and fuck her up against the walls of her brownstone. _Whatever floats her boat_ , Connie thinks to herself, bitter only because she weighs too much for anyone to support her if she ever wanted them to fuck her up against a wall. Instead of telling Ed any of this she texts him back: **What did your greeting card say?**

Ed replies: **Your eyes are as green as a meadow. Your smile is as bright as the sun. Your skin is as white as a snowflake. It seems like your life is fun.**

 _Are you fucking kidding me?_ Connie thinks. _Ed has known Kristen peripherally for years, but everything in that greeting card was about her appearance or his perception of her. Nothing about who Kristen actually is. It’s superficial as fuck._

Except she can’t trust her opinion when it comes to this because her heart is involved. Connie hates herself because she’s caught between resenting Kristen for being the object of his desire and wanting to punch Ed in the face for objectifying her. Not a good place to be. Especially with two friendships hanging in the balance.

Ed texts her: **What can you keep, but can’t share, and once you share it, you can’t keep it anymore?**

 **Secrets,** answers Connie.

Kristen apologizes to Ed after she finds him still working later that night, but when he tries to ask her out she tells him not to say anything else. Gordon arrests Flass within the hour for murdering a witness inside the precinct. Ed texts Connie: **There is hope.**

Connie responds with a thumbs up emoji and tugs her lower lip between her teeth in a failed attempt to avoid crying over him again. Laurel Burton, one of three children’s librarians at the Old Gotham branch, comes into the breakroom and notices her epic failure to hold her tears back. “Connie,” she says gently, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Connie wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. Which is black, so her mascara won’t stain the fabric.

Laurel doesn’t contradict her or point out that her pants should probably be on fire, nevermind that she wore a skirt today. “There’s someone asking for you at the reference desk,” she says as she sits in a chair beside Connie and removes her glasses carefully before she uses a rough napkin to dab at the streaks under her eyes with lackluster results.

Connie extracts a plastic case of makeup removing wipes from her purse. “Thank you,” she opens her _Sailor Moon_ brooch compact and holds it with one hand while she wipes the streaks of mascara away with the other. “If you have the time, please tell whoever it is that I’ll be out in a minute.”

Laurel gives her a smile chock-full of reassurance before she gets back to work. Connie puts her glasses back on, noisily blows her nose with another napkin, squares her shoulders, and goes to meet the person waiting for her at the reference desk. Of course it’s Nathan Kane, the billionaire Eve fixed her up with as a birthday surprise. Ever since Harvey proposed, her cousin has been worried about Connie existing in a perpetual state of singularity.

Connie gnaws on the fingernail of her left pinkie without biting through it.  _It might be time to change that_ , she thinks. “Hi,” she says out loud.

“Hi.” Nate smiles at her.

There is power in making one thing out of another, but even the most powerful witch cannot make something out of nothing. Connie smiles back in a doomed effort to do just that.

* * *

Maroni takes Oswald to a cabin in the woods and tries to kill him, but he escapes and spends the night stuck in a situation from a bad horror film. Except instead of a scantily clad ingénue, it’s a hobbling snitch in the only expensive suit he owns. Ed is suspended after he gets caught performing another illicit autopsy. Kristen says she wishes something could be done after he returns a pencil stub he stole from her. Ed makes it happen in a gruesome manner.

 **I got reinstated after the medical examiner was fired last night,** he texts Connie the next morning. Ed doesn’t tell her that he dismembered a few unclaimed bodies and left the pieces in his locker to facilitate his departure.

Leslie Thompkins, who replaces Dr. Guerra, is a hedgewitch descended from the Crowley bloodline a few generations back whose powers include telempathy and healing small injuries. There is a witch from another bloodline locked away in Arkham whose specialty is curses using objects, specifically dolls, as a focus during the cast.

Ed introduces them one afternoon when Connie meets him for lunch, only to realize they know each other. “How do you know Dr. Thompkins?” he asks, his voice equal parts curiosity and surprise. As if it never occurred to him that he doesn’t know everything about her.

 _Oh_ , thinks Connie, _the irony_.

“Well,” Leslie smiles at Connie and reaches out to gently squeeze her upper arm just above her elbow, “we’re not close, but we’re family—third cousins, I think?”

Connie nods, insecure in the knowledge that Leslie can probably sense how she feels about Ed. “How have you been since the funeral?” she asks. “I know you were friends with Martha Wayne.”

“I’ve been keeping busy.” Leslie tucks her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat. “How are you holding up?”

Connie has mixed feelings when it comes to her grandmother. On the bright side, Constance the first taught her enough control to avoid curdling the blood of everyone who throws off her groove. On the darker side, she forced Connie to practice with Hallie to give her an incentive to learn. If her best friend weren’t an anthropomorphic dragon, she probably wouldn’t have survived. Constance didn’t know Hallie wasn’t human when she told Connie that sacrifice is the only way to power. Except it isn’t, not if a witch is capable of siphoning power from living things without mutilation or murder. Connie is a hemomancer, and hemomancy is the ability to use the magic in blood without sacrificial offerings or severed extremities. Leslie knows all of this because she’s the one who put Hallie back together in the aftermath thirteen years ago.

“Awesome.” Connie smiles back at her third cousin and sister witch, one corner of her mouth unfurling without showcasing her teeth.

* * *

Hallie is leaving their apartment complex for a shift at the diner when Oswald returns from running through the woods and riding on a bus full of church ladies. “What happened to you?” she wonders, her nose crinkling with amusement as she plucks a crisp autumn leaf from his frightfully disheveled black hair.

Oswald wraps one hand around her neck and slants his lips over hers while he presses her into the stairwell, his other hand circling her wrist so the leaf falls from her fingers to the floor. Hallie makes an indignant noise and opens her mouth, but he uses the opportunity to flick his tongue between her teeth and lick at her palate. It’s less a kiss and more of a devourment, the pressure of his lips savage on hers as his tongue slides messy and slick into her mouth, his teeth bruising her bottom lip before he pulls back to catch his breath.

Hallie’s golden freckled skin is dark enough that she doesn’t blush easily, but she’s flushed now from her cheeks to the hollow of her throat. Luckily he didn’t notice the scales on the back of her neck or the inside of her wrist because he was preoccupied with kissing her breathless. Hallie passes them off as tattoos when people see them, but their scabrous texture is a dead giveaway. “I’m going to work now,” she informs him, her voice rendered hoarse by his kiss, “and when I get back I’m going to pretend this never happened. Got it?”

Oswald is somewhat disappointed that she didn’t slap him. Hallie takes his silence as unspoken agreement to her terms and takes flight without looking back. Oswald watches her leave and licks his lips, tasting the sweet flavor of the gloss he kissed away.

* * *

Falcone gives the nightclub formerly owned and operated by Fish Mooney to Oswald a week later. Ed meets him when he comes to the precinct with an invitation to his club opening for Gordon. **I met Penguin,** he texts Connie, **where are you?**

 **Did we have lunch plans?** Connie texts back.

Ed frowns at the screen of his phone, narrowing his eyes at the bright green balloon surrounding her message. **Yes,** he responds.

 **I’m sorry,** Connie replies. **I must’ve forgotten. I’m actually on a date.**

Ed puts his phone down as his fingers go slack with shock and he sees red. _What did you think_ , a snide voice fizzes up from a dark corner of his mind, _that she would be single forever? Or maybe you hoped she wouldn’t let another man touch her after she was raped ten years ago? Why is that? Why can’t you stand the idea of her with anyone? Is it because you find her repulsive? Or because you don’t want anyone else to take her from you?_

 _Be quiet_ , Ed shakes his head to shut the voice out.

 _Imagine her in the arms of another man_ , the voice snarls. _Imagine her asking you to move out because she wants her boyfriend to live at Newgrange with her instead. Imagine living with her, watching her with another man, until she asks you to leave. Imagine hearing the noises she would make if another man kissed her, touched her, fucked her_ —

 _Be quiet!_ Ed clenches his jaw and his teeth grind so hard it hurts.

 _Imagine her in your arms_ , the voice whispers. _Imagine her in nothing but those stockings and garters with her_ _toes curling over a rung of the ladder in her library while she begs you to take her from behind_ —

“Mr. Nygma?” Ed snaps out of his mind at the sound of Kristen saying his name. “Connie told me that you might be upset,” he turns to look at her and exhales sharply as the ugly voice in his head falls silent, “she asked me to bring you lunch. Here.” At that, she puts a plastic bag of takeout containers on his desk and gives him half a smile before she turns on her heels, the soft curl of her ponytail bouncing as she walks away.

Ed heaves a sigh and opens the bag of takeout to find an order of fettucine alfredo with pepper, garlic, and no onions. Connie knows that’s his favorite. It’s hers too, except she likes caramelized onions for some unfathomable reason.

When she picks him up from the precinct that night, Ed folds himself into the passenger seat of her roadster and sits in palpably awkward silence for a few blocks until he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me you were dating someone?” he wants to know.

Connie huffs. “I’m not dating him, not really. Eve invited him to the masquerade because she’s worried I’m going to die alone, he left on a business trip for a few weeks and came to the library to ask me out when he got back. I said yes because I’m tired of being perpetually single and lonely. Nate agreed that we should get to know each other as friends before we make things official.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were lonely?” Ed asks, his caustic tone harsher than he intended, his hands fisted in the fabric of his slacks.

Connie takes a sharp left onto the bridge that leads over the river and through the woods to Newgrange. “Why are you so upset that I’m dating somebody?” she retorts.

“Because…” Ed fizzles out on the sibilant as the wrought iron gates swing open of their own accord. “Because you’re my best friend.”

“I’m not going to stop being your friend just because I made another friend who might become my boyfriend eventually,” Connie presses her lips into a thin line as she parks the roadster in the garage, “but I won’t be able to have lunch with you four or five times a week anymore. At some point I won’t be able to carpool with you every day either because Nate might take me out to dinner. If things ever progress to a point where I’m comfortable inviting him over to hang out or have dinner or bump uglies, I promise to set ground rules with you first. At the very least I’ll put a sock on the door.”

Ed spends the night playing _Dragon Age: Inquisition_ until his alarm beeps at seven o’clock the next morning. There is a sock on his doorknob that falls to the floor when he leaves his room to go questing for sustenance. Connie is still asleep in the library because today is her day off. There’s no coffee brewed in the kitchen or breakfast on the table. Ed takes a banana from the bowl of fruit on the counter and a chocolate chip zucchini muffin from a platter covered in tinfoil on the island. Connie is his best friend, his only friend, the person he loves most in the world. It’s selfish, but he doesn’t want to share her with anyone else. Connie has been a part of his life for two decades of peripheral becoming platonic becoming domestic becoming distance inevitably settling between them while she befriends another man with the intention of falling in love eventually.

 _I don’t want that_ , Ed thinks. _I don’t know why, but I just don’t_.

* * *

Alberto Falcone confesses to the Holiday killings a few weeks after Montoya and Allen interrogate Connie. Apparently he murdered Hallie’s granduncle the gunsmith. Ironically, the same judge who held court during Gigante versus Crowley sentences him to life in the newly reopened Arkham Asylum.

Eve meticulously disassembles her corkboard tacked with candid photographs and newspaper clippings of the people involved in rigging the rape trial, black string connecting her victims to Vincenzo, and notes scrawled on yellow legal paper. Harvey watches her squat in front of their fireplace to burn the evidence of her monstrosity, the snapshots Eve took bubbling to distort their captured images as the paper crinkles to ash.

“Gotham is still trapped under mob rule,” Harvey protests. “We’re not finished yet.”

“I am.” Eve throws the last scrap of paper on the fire. “Vincenzo is dead. Alberto confessed to our crimes. We’ll never get caught because as far as the cops are concerned, the Holiday Killer is locked up. It’s the perfect time to stop killing. I avenged Connie,” she tickles the burning remnants of her killing spree with a hot poker. “I don’t feel the need to kill anymore.”

“I do,” Harvey retorts, “you avenged your cousin, but I didn’t get justice for my family. I don’t want to do this without you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. I’m not stopping until Maroni is dead.”

Eve sighs and stands in one smooth motion. “When you asked me to marry you, I said yes because I knew you were a monster too. No matter how good your intentions are,” she twirls the poker between her fingers like a baton and doesn’t even flinch when the igneous metal touches her skin, “you will never be able to achieve your ends without violent means. I’m not your partner in crime. I’m your partner for life,” she reaches up to smooth her palm over the side of his face thrown into shadow by the firelight and digs her nails into the nape of his neck. “I believe in you, Harvey Dent. I know what you’re capable of. I won’t let you go where I can’t follow.”

* * *

Dorian Larkin, Hallie’s father, hosts a potluck Thanksgiving dinner for his family in the private banquet room upstairs at the _Golden Dragon_ while the restaurant stays open downstairs for people who prefer Chinese food to a traditional turkey dinner. Hallie brings sriracha and wasabi deviled eggs garnished with chives and Chinese five-spice powder. Oswald shows up after her second glass of sparkling wine, apologizes for being late, and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek. Hallie squawks, a high undignified noise working its way up from her belly through her throat. Oswald sits beside her at the table and takes the hand that isn’t preoccupied with her chopsticks.

“What do you think you’re doing, emperor fuckboy?” she whispers through clenched teeth as he intertwines their fingers.

“I’m meeting your parents.” Oswald brings her hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles. Hallie tenses as the heel of his palm brushes over the scales on the inside of her wrist.

“Like hell.” Hallie stands and yanks him up out of the chair next to hers before she pulls him into the hallway. “Láojià,” she calls over her shoulder.

“What does that mean?” Oswald asks.

“It means ‘excuse me’ in Mandarin.” Hallie untangles her fingers from his. “There’s half a dozen ways to say ‘excuse me,’ but the one I used is the most formal because this is Thanksgiving dinner with my whole motherfucking family. What the hell are you doing here?”

Oswald says the last thing she expects. “I like you, Halcyon. I’ve been watching you these past few weeks—”

“I know,” Hallie rolls her eyes at him, “you have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Connie says you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but I don’t see it.”

Oswald smirks, the corners of his mouth curling with smugness to cover the nauseating, visceral squelch of curiosity elicited when he wonders how Connie knows that about him. “I learn things watching people I wouldn’t know otherwise. For example, you flirt with customers to get better tips but never with anyone who might take it seriously. Other things,” he waddles closer to her until her back presses against the hallway wall, “I learn by greasing the palms of people whose thumbs are in the right pies. For example, you’ve saved every penny you’ve made since you were fifteen. What are you saving for, Halcyon?” he wants to know. “A rainy day? A nest, perhaps?”

“I’m thrifty.” Hallie shrugs like a bird, her shoulder blades jutting back as her shoulders hunch. “It’s my nature.” Abruptly, she changes the subject. “I didn’t go to my brother’s funeral,” she informs him. “Chinese funeral ceremonies last seven weeks and you’re supposed to cry at the wake but that’s difficult to manage when you’re glad the deceased is dead. If you distract my mother from passive-aggressively catechizing me about it, then you can stay.”

Oswald offers his arm to her the way Connie did when they came armed to a secret location before. Hallie tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow with a sigh and they return to one of the hundred and thirty four levels of Buddhist hell. It’s blatantly obvious that he never learned how to use chopsticks. Dorian eventually takes pity on Oswald and gives him a plastic fork.

Meifeng Huang, Hallie’s grandmother, sips gunpowder tea from a hexagonal cup before she eats the cheek of a broiled whole rock cod. “Fěicuì,” she deftly extracts the other fish cheek from beneath its eye and offers it to her granddaughter.

“What does…” Oswald trails off at the unfamiliar syllables, “… _faye quai_ mean?”

“It’s my name in Mandarin,” Hallie explains. “It means a bird with red and blue feathers. It’s a type of kingfisher, a halcyon bird.”

It occurs to him that her namesake is probably what she drew at the bottom of the note she left on the lady whose toes she took. Oswald chuckles and surreptitiously puts his hand on the outside of her thigh to see if the sheath that holds her cleaver is strapped under her skirt. Indeed it is. When he feels along the handle of her weapon to her hipbone, his cock twitches at the knowledge that if she were provoked into drawing the cleaver on someone, she would have to lift her skirt to do so. Unsettlingly, he isn’t sure if what turns him on is the idea of her exposing her bare flesh or the possibility of her taking a person apart.

Hallie takes his hand in hers after he moves his fingers over the crease of her thigh and gives him a pointed look as if to say, _Don’t push your luck_.


	5. One May Create Monsters Through Hybridization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 1x17 (“Red Hood”) and 1x21 (“The Anvil or the Hammer”).

**I will be a force of nature. I will be rose red,**  
**I will be blood, I will be fists of vengeance;  
**I will be the magic mirror and dark wood.****

Jeannine Hall Gailey, “Snow White Imagines Herself”

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 4**  
One May Create Monsters Through Hybridization 

* * *

**V**

Monsters are variously characterized by accident, indetermination, formlessness; by material incompleteness, categorical ambiguity, ontological instability. One may create monsters through hybridization, hypertrophy, or hypotrophy; through lack, excess, or multiplication; through the substitution of elements, the confusion of species, or the conflation of genders and genres.

* * *

Gotham City Bank uses a triquetra as their logo. Eve chose to open her first bank account there because of the irony in that. Although the triquetra is often misappropriated by Christianity to signify the holy trinity, it’s meant to represent the aspects of the triple goddess as maiden, mother, and crone. Supposedly the Crowley bloodline is descended from the Morrígan, a triple goddess in Celtic mythology, and the Dagda, the Irish equivalent of the Allfather. According to legend, the Morrígan destroys a Fomorian king on Samhain by taking the blood of his heart and bringing two handfuls of it to a river in the aftermath.

If that version of the myth is true, Connie inherited the power of hemomancy from the Morrígan herself. Eve doesn’t know whether the Crowley variation is right or wrong. All she knows is that she talks back when crows speak to her in their strange ticking, clattering language.

There are crows on the powerlines above the street outside the bank after the first Red Hood robbery. Eve hears about it from them when a murder descends upon her at the townhouse to drop a crumpled pile of cash at her feet like an offering.

Maybe they see their goddess in her after all.

* * *

Oswald is waiting for Hallie on the staircase when she comes home at fuck off o’clock in the morning after a repurposed Butch solves his liquor problem and they toast to Fish. “I’m not kissing you again,” she informs him with a yawn she muffles with the heel of her hand. “I worked a triple shift tonight. I’ve been on my feet for eighteen hours. I’m not in the mood for whatever this,” she flails her hand between them, “is. Got it?”

“What if I didn’t kiss you on the mouth?” Oswald licks his lips as he looks up at her. “What if I want to kiss you somewhere else?”

“Are you offering to go down on me?” Hallie wants to know.

“Yes,” Oswald lets his gaze linger on her while he uses the handrail to get back on his feet, “a little death might help you sleep, Halcyon.”

“I’m not going to sleep yet,” Hallie informs him with another yawn. “I’m going to take a hot bath and then I’m going to sleep in tomorrow because it’s my one day off this month. I have a vibrator,” she does her best to seem immune to him even though she felt herself get a little wet at his offer, “I don’t need you to get me off.” At that, she puts one hand on the banister and winces her way up three flights of stairs without looking back. Despite wearing comfortable shoes made specifically for people working jobs like hers, the arches of her feet ache with every step.

As she runs her bath, she thinks up all of the reasons why she can’t have sex with him. One, she doesn’t have sweat glands because she’s coldblooded. Hallie generally opts for getting her partners so incoherent they don’t realize she isn’t working up a sweat during sex. Oswald is too freakishly observant not to notice something of that ilk, no matter how good in bed she is. Two, his mother is literally the worst. Anybody who gets involved with him will inevitably end up enmeshed with his mother. _Across the hall is involved enough_ , Hallie decides. Three, he poisoned Darius with cannoli. Blasphemy against the sacred pastry aside, fucking someone who murdered your brother is a dick move in the literal and figural sense, even if your brother used to beat you black and blue on the regular. Four, he’s a greedy little motherfucker whose eyes are too big for his stomach. Between his failed attempt to raise mob taxes on fishermen and instigating a robbery to line his own pockets, a blind man could see that letting him know dragons who hoard treasure exist in human form is a terrible idea. Five, his plan to rule Gotham when the dust settles in the aftermath of a war amongst the Falcone and Maroni crime families could go spectacularly wrong and caught in the middle of a power struggle isn’t where she wants to be. Six, his hair gets more ridiculous every time she sees him. Seven, it’s very possible that he only wants her because she keeps refusing him. Which is totally counterintuitive. Ergo, if sleeping with him is the only way to make him go away, then he’s going to be around forever.

Hallie sighs and sinks into her bath, too exhausted to figure out whether or not she wants him to stay.

* * *

Flass is released from Blackgate Penitentiary after the charges against him are dropped. Harvey learns that Commissioner Loeb provided the witness that got Flass off on a technicality and cancels his plans to have lunch with Eve to meet Gordon at the _Square Diner_ instead. After they interrogate Griggs—Loeb’s former partner—they end up fleeing a takeout place in Chinatown and getting rescued by Bullock. Eve comes to pick Harvey up beneath the overpass Gordon and Bullock leave him under so they can roust Griggs by holding his head out the open door of a moving car without making an ADA culpable in what is technically police brutality.

Eve waits for her fiancée to fold himself into the passenger seat of her Impala and buckle his seatbelt before she brings the thunder. “What the hell?” she snarls as the sky begins to cloud over.

“Eve,” Harvey raises his eyebrows as a thick fog descends over the road to swallow them whole, “calm down. You’re brewing a storm.”

“I am the antithesis of calm!” Eve yells. “What happened to ‘I don’t want to do this without you’?” she takes one hand off of the steering wheel to swat at him with her tiny ineffectual fist. “You walked into a goddamn ambush, Harvey! You should know better than to go off half-cocked like that—”

Harvey jerks the wheel out of her other hand as sudden rainfall diffuses the remnants of her fog. Eve slams on the brakes with one foot as he pulls over to the side of the road. Harvey switches gears to park the car, unbuckles her seatbelt, grabs her by the hair, and yanks her into his lap so they’re both in the passenger seat. “I’m half what now?” he growls, the fingers of his other hand curling into the flesh of her ass through the sturdy material of her pencil skirt while the hard length of his cock presses against her leg through the layers of fabric between their bodies.

“You heard me,” Eve growls back, “half-cocked—”

Harvey uses the hand still tangled in her hair to pull her down and kiss her savage, hungry, bruising so her lips are swollen red by the time he moves his mouth to her neck. Eve runs her fingers through his hair, messing it up the way she always wants to do whenever he slicks it back. Harvey rips the front of her blouse when he tries and fails to undo the buttons with his teeth before he untangles the hand in her hair, unhooking the front clasp of her bra to tug her nipple between his thumb and forefingers. Soon the buttons on her pencil skirt pop open and he slides his hand between her legs, two fingers stroking over the damp crotch of her panties. Harvey uses his thumb to move the silk and lace aside, working the same two fingers into her knuckle deep and crooking them to mercilessly seek out a spot inside her that makes her spine arch while she moans his name out loud.

“I love you.” Harvey moves his thumb to rub sloppy circles over her clit, grinning when her hips buck against his hand, at the obscene wet noises her cunt makes as his fingers move inside her. “I love you so much. I want you to come for me right now, come all over my hand—”

Eve clenches around his fingers, a tattered moan torn in pieces from her throat as she orgasms so hard her whole body slumps to bury her face between his neck and shoulder, her slick dripping all over his knuckles and palm. There is a different kind of fog condensating on the windows and windshield of the car when she gets back into her seat. “I love you back,” she tells him while he wipes his hand on the lining of his jacket, “but I’m still mad at you.”

“Yes, dear.” Harvey smirks at her because her blouse is undone and her skirt is unbuttoned, her golden curls a hot mess, her fair skin flushed blotchy red in the aftermath of her orgasm. Eve turns to glare at him as she buckles herself back in. “What?” he shrugs, “we’re getting married four weeks from now and I for one am looking forward to acting like an old married couple until we grow old together and become one.”

Eve buttons her pencil skirt back up with a petulant sigh before she starts the car. “I liked this shirt,” she informs him.

Harvey shrugs again as she pulls the car back onto the road. “Worth it,” he retorts smugly.

* * *

Ed texts Connie: **Miss Kringle told me she appreciates my concern, but she realizes there are far better men in the world than Flass! Also, she touched my forearm. What do you think that means? Is she giving me permission to take action, like you said?**

Connie doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it doesn’t mean what he thinks it means because Kristen is dating someone new. _Jane Austen lied to me_ , she thinks. _Friendship is certainly not the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love_.

Ed works through his lunch break to leave the precinct early and buys a bouquet for Kristen before he returns to the G. C. P. D.. When he tries to ask her out, Kristen introduces him to Officer Tom Doherty—her new boyfriend—instead. Ed walks six blocks to the library and waits for Connie to finish her shift.

“Why didn’t you tell me Kristen has a new boyfriend?” he hurls the question at her like a grenade as they emerge from the library.

“I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” Connie says for the umpteenth time while she unlocks the roadster. “Besides, you like her whether she has a boyfriend or not. Kristen has dated five dudes this year—six if you count that one dude she started dating last November and then dumped in January—and still your thing for her persists. I didn’t think it would matter.”

“I bought flowers,” Ed informs her. “I texted Hallie to ask what her favorite was and she texted back _new phone who dis?_ Apparently it’s a meme I somehow missed. I made a fool of myself in front of the girl I love and maybe I wouldn’t have if you—”

Connie holds her hand out to shut him up. “Kristen doesn’t like you back,” she says flatly. “She thinks you’re a creepy dude who makes her uncomfortable in your mutual workplace. She only tolerates you because you’re my best friend and your crush on her gives her a confidence boost whenever she has a bad self-esteem day. She makes you feel bad about yourself and you creep her out more often than not. You’re not in love with her,” she exhales a derisive noise. “You don’t even know her. You have no idea what love even is.”

“Connie,” Ed notices the tears on her face and his voice pitches higher in distress, “pull over. You’re crying. You shouldn’t drive—”

Connie sets her jaw, wipes her fallen tears on her sleeve, and stubbornly keeps driving. “I have been in love with you since we were sixteen,” she whispers, “but I don’t want to love someone who treats women like you do. I don’t know if I want to stay friends after I get over these irksomely persistent romantic feelings. I want you to leave Kristen alone. I’m done with you refusing to take a hint. I’m done with her leading you on. I’m just,” she tugs her lower lip between her teeth and takes a deep breath through her nose, “I’m just so done.”

Ed is rendered speechless by her words. Connie loves him. _Connie_ loves him. Connie _loves_ him. Connie loves _him_. It keeps buzzing through his brain like static on a feedback loop all the way back to Newgrange.

Connie tells Ed she needs space and stops talking to him. Disquiet stretches between them for three weeks, permeating the halls of the manor with a palpable tension. Ed starts driving himself to work in the clunky green rust bucket of a car she named Grendel, coming and going through the back door—the servant entrance, segregated from the main door by a winding cobblestone path less traveled gnarling at the edges of the manor. Connie spends her nights in the kitchen, in the greenhouse, in the library, cooking and reading and growing out of his sight but never out of his mind. Hallie moves in during the second week of silence once her lease is up and helps Connie harvest the winter vegetables: lettuce, cabbage, spinach, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, parsnips and green beans. Ed smells broccoli set to broil in the oven and is hit with a pang of loneliness so intense he tears up.

Hallie catches him that night in the hallway on his way to see Connie. “Nope,” she makes shooing motions with her hands, “you’ve lost your Connie privileges.”

Ed swallows thickly. “I have to apologize.”

“For what?” Hallie bites down on the _t_ at the end. “For your epic failure to notice how she feels about you? For mooning over two girls who basically epitomize all of her insecurities? For not loving her back?”

“I do!” Ed is viscerally offended by the notion that he doesn’t. Connie is his best friend, the person he never gets sick of no matter how often they see each other, the person he always talks to because he likes telling her stuff and hearing her speak in equal measure, the person who calls him on his crap and tells him when he fucks up, the person who never makes him feel bad about himself even during those moments, the person he loves most in the world. “I do love her,” he swallows thickly, “of course I do.”

“Fine.” Hallie folds her arms. “For not loving her the way she loves you. For making your best friend resent other people she loves by objectifying them and making her resent you in the process. For putting her in the middle even though she explicitly asked you not to. For letting her confession of love she aged for over a decade like decent scotch float around in the ether. For taking her for granted. If all you have to say is that you’re sorry, then you can wait until she feels up to accepting your apology. Got it?”

Ed nods, a quick descent of his chin, and makes a tactical retreat into his bedroom. Hallie keeps a box of distal phalanx bones, all taken from her brother after she took out a restraining order against him. There are fresher pinkie toes in their fridge cut at the proximal, lower than distal by one or two bones depending on which toe, which in turn means she refined her technique at some point. Ed likes having all of his toes attached.

Gordon asks him to look for missing evidence the next day. Ed throws himself into helping investigate the Fairchild murder and they discover that the victim was stabbed by a serial killer called the Ogre who threatens the loved ones of the cops who go after him. Ed goes to the records annex to return the evidence he pulled on the Fairchild case. Ironically, it’s a broken heart, but he’s not sure whose heart it represents. Connie is still giving him the silent treatment and that’s more heartbreaking than Kristen dating someone else. Again.

Kristen is behind her desk, smiling at the screen of her phone. When she notices him, she puts her phone down. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Nygma?”

Ed places the file carefully on her desk and signs it back in himself. “Miss Kringle,” he stands and folds his hands in front of him. “Are you in love with Officer Doherty?”

Kristen adjusts her glasses with one hand. “Well,” she says, “it’s still too soon to tell. We’ve only been dating for six weeks, but there are things I love about him. Why do you ask?”

“Connie.” Ed swallows thickly as he thinks about the shudders woven through her shoulders while she drove and cried simultaneously. “Connie said I don’t know what love is,” he informs the floor.

“I don’t think anybody knows,” Kristen tilts her head to look up at him so the curl of her ponytail flops over her shoulder, “everybody is different so every love is different. I think love is unconditional. I think if you love someone, then you love everything they are. Even their worst parts,” she puts the evidence he returned in a pile of things to be refiled. “I also think you love Connie back. I know you don’t think sexual attraction is a reliable method to find a suitable partner,” she gives him a gentle smile he’s never seen on her face before and it takes him a few seconds to realize she’s teasing him, “but that’s not true if you’re attracted to your best friend.”

Ed thinks of Connie on the couch next to him, reading while he plays video games with her bare feet tucked under his thigh to keep them warm. Connie offering to cut his hair, her fingers lingering on his neck every time. Connie smiling at whatever comes out of the oven, Connie talking to the plants in her gardens and greenhouse, Connie licking the blood from his finger when he gets a papercut and kissing it better. Connie rolling her stockings down her thighs to reveal striae like strikes of pink lightning. Connie elbow deep in garden dirt and sweating like a pig. Connie not only solving his riddles but answering with riddles of her own. Connie, who has a sense of humor as peculiar as his own.

“Miss Kringle.” Ed forces himself to meet her eyes. “I won’t be pursuing you romantically anymore. I apologize for making you uncomfortable because that was unacceptable. I realize now that we’re coworkers who happen to share mutual friends. I’d like to remedy that by cultivating a friendship with you without any ulterior motives.”

Kristen picks up the pile of folders and cuts around the corner of her desk to the nearest filing cabinet. “I think I’d like that, Mr. Nygma.”

Ed grins as he leaves the records annex, feeling as though he found the missing piece that fits into a very important puzzle.

* * *

Oswald doesn’t see Hallie for a week because he buys the farmhouse where Miriam Loeb lives after he forces her caretakers into a fight to the death and shoots the winner, then purchases a bar to kill Maroni in after he separates a guitarist from his fingers. When he waits for her in the stairwell one night, she doesn’t show. When he picks the lock and breaks into her apartment, he finds it empty like a nest blown from a tree and torn apart on the road below. There is evidence that she lived here in the spackle on the walls, the faded squares where posters used to hang, the grooves in the carpet from her absent furniture, but apparently the woman he fell halfway in love with as she held a cleaver to his throat and drew his blood is gone. Oswald doesn’t know where she moved to, but he knows how to find her.

Hallie is eating her lunch when he waddles into the breakroom. “What are you doing here?” she asks, her question muffled around a bite of her sandwich before she swallows. “Didn’t you see the sign on the door? This breakroom is for employees only, emperor fuckboy.”

“I waited for you in the stairwell last night,” he informs her, “and then I picked your lock only to find that you had moved out.”

“Qǐé,” Hallie sighs, “we’re not dating. Hell, we’re not even friends. You’re pretty much stalking me and I have no idea why I’m cool with that. You don’t get a say in where I live.”

“I don’t care where you live!” Oswald splutters indignantly, his face turning red as his frown unfurls like an umbrella. “I just want to know why you moved!”

Hallie is suddenly mortified. What in the hundred and thirty four levels of Buddhist hell is wrong with her that she thinks his little tantrum is cute? “Connie asked me to move in with her last summer after her parents retired,” she informs him, “but I signed a two year lease on my apartment. I couldn’t get out of it until now. As if I wouldn’t prefer living rent free in a huge manor with one of my best friends to living in an expensive one bedroom apartment with a Norma Bates knockoff who calls me an Oriental hussy across the hall.”

Oswald is so relieved he ignores the pointed remark directed at his mother and pulls back the chair across from her. There is an unpleasant screech that ensues when the metal legs of the chair scrape across the floor before he takes his seat. “What does _chi ugh_ mean?” he asks.

“It means ‘penguin’ in Mandarin.” Hallie yanks the cuffs of her sleeves down to cover the scales on the inside of her wrists. “Will you go away if I sleep with you?”

Oswald chokes on his own air. “What?” he wheezes.

“I’ve done the dating thing,” Hallie noisily sips her soda through her straw, “and the friends with benefits thing, and the benefits without friendship thing, and now I’m doing the no dating or sex thing. I know you don’t date either. I have no idea what you want from me.”

“I told you,” Oswald locks eyes with her and holds her gaze as his tone becomes deadly serious, “I want everything. Your mind. Your body. Your heart. Your loyalty. Your strength. Your cleaver spilling the blood of my enemies. Your hand in mine.”

 _Oh_ , Hallie thinks. _Oh no_.

“What do you want, Halcyon?” Oswald wonders. “What drives you? Not money. If that were the case, you’d be working for your uncle instead of waiting tables. Not envy. If that were the case, you’d be more ambitious. Not power. Again, you’d be a member of the triad instead of a waitress at some greasy spoon. Not acting or singing, because you haven’t been onstage in years and that doesn’t seem to bother you. Not lust, since you’re ostensibly content with celibacy and your vibrator. Not romantic love, but perhaps the platonic love you feel toward your friends Miss Crowley, Miss Gold, and Miss Kringle.”

Hallie shrugs and pops a fry into her mouth. “I don’t have a singular motivation,” she informs him after she finishes chewing and swallows. “I don’t need a _raison d’être_. I exist whether I have a reason for being or not. I like my job. I love my friends. I miss being onstage sometimes, but it was never what I wanted to do with my life. I’m only twenty-six. I’m allowed to have no idea what I want to do with myself. I contain multitudes, Qǐé. If you want to date me, you need to stop all this manipulative stalker nonsense and just ask me out like a normal dude.”

Oswald tilts his head in concession. “Will you go out with me, Halcyon?”

“Not tonight.” Hallie takes a final obnoxiously loud slurp of her soda and throws the paper cup into the trash can behind her without looking. It doesn’t even touch the plastic rim, sinking into the plastic garbage bag with a soft thump. “I’m going to see _Annie_ tomorrow,” she informs him, “I was planning to watch it alone. I guess we’ll see how things pan out.”

Oswald waddles into the movie theatre the next day with an umbrella as a makeshift cane and a henchman lurking behind him, then proceeds to steal most of her popcorn. If he tears up during “I Don’t Need Anything But You” and every rendition of “Tomorrow” she doesn’t call him on it. Instead of taking her hand, Oswald leaves his palm up on the armrest like a challenge. Hallie is the one who intertwines their fingers, making a choice to go past the point of no return.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Hallie falls in love at the drop of a hat. Trouble is, she falls out of love as fast and hard. It’s one reason she doesn’t date anymore—the drama involved with being a heartbreaker is not what she wants now that she is, supposedly, an adult. Hallie should know better than she does, but apparently not because she ends up dating Oswald, taking later shifts at the diner to hang out with him almost every morning before his nightclub opens.

There are a lot of brunches, a lot of kissing in the stairwell, a lot of her worrying that his mother will catch them adding spice to the ill-advised mix. It’s like she’s a teenager again, making out but not going all the way.

Oswald kisses violently, leaving marks on her neck and bruises in the shape of his fingers clutching her hips or waist. As if he’s holding onto her in a futile attempt to keep her from flying away.

Hallie knows from experience that she’s going to stop wanting him eventually. All she has to do is wait.

It never occurs to her that he might be the exception to her rule.

* * *

Connie is deathly allergic to watermelons, one of many things she inherited from her mother. Ed uses the corpulent fruit to check the murder weapon against the puncture wounds on the victim. Kristen loves watermelon. It’s her favorite, so Ed brings her some of the casualties from his experiment the next morning because that seems like something a friend might do. Connie left a tiny bag of colorful plastic cutlasses on his desk at some point and so he makes use of them. When he arrives, Tom is pressing Kristen back against one of her filing cabinets to kiss her with one hand on her waist. Ed hovers awkwardly in the doorway to the records annex as they break the kiss. Tom disentangles himself from their embrace and walks away, stealing a piece of watermelon before he leaves.

Kristen recollects herself, adjusting her glasses and smoothing the hem of her skirt before she exhales a shaky breath. “Mr. Nygma,” she turns and faces him, “did you need something?”

“Oh! Yes,” Ed cradles the watermelon in the crook of one elbow as he crosses the room to meet her. “Detective Gordon wanted me to go through the forensic evidence of these old murders.”

“Okay.” Kristen fizzles out as Ed gives her a list. When she takes it, he notices vivid discoloration on her forearm.

“Are those bruises?” he blurts with equal parts concern and incredulity, “did Officer Doherty do that?”

“He was upset,” Kristen stutters, flailing her hand in a futile attempt to wave the violence away. “He didn’t mean to. I said some things I shouldn’t have, and—”

“Miss Kringle,” Ed says vehemently, “this is not right. He can’t just…”

“Mr. Nygma,” Kristen holds her head up high and says firmly, “this is none of your concern. Now,” she whirls toward one of her filing cabinets, “I need to get started on these files, so…”

Ed takes the watermelon with him when he goes, the tremor permeating her exhales too loud in his ears. __

* * *

Nate asks Connie to the Wayne Foundation Charity Ball hosted by the Fledermaus Gallery over dinner and invites her back to his apartment. Connie starts crying while he kisses her because she doesn’t feel anything. Nate makes her feel worse because he’s totally sweet and understanding when she tells him they can’t see each other anymore.

Connie hunches soft and hollowed out like rotten fruit, the aftertaste twice as bitter in her mouth. Hallie texts her: **Kristen’s boyfriend is abusing her. Ed saw the bruises on her arm.** Connie drives straight to the precinct from the penthouse and slams into the records annex.

Kristen almost jumps out of her chair at the intrusion because the force of the door hitting the wall knocks a heavy box askew. “Connie,” she huffs a sigh heavier than all of the information in the room, “I told Mr. Nygma this is none of his concern and it’s not yours either.”

“Hell yes it’s my concern.” Connie stomps across the room to reach for her with both hands, one trapping her wrist, the other yanking back her sleeve to reveal the contusions on her skin. “Look at this. Don’t cover it up. Look at what he did to you. I’ve been telling Ed you deserve better when I should’ve been telling you instead. I couldn’t care less what he said or how sweetly he apologized. Don’t go back to him. Don’t let him do this again.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me,” Kristen whispers more to herself than Connie. “I said some things I shouldn’t have...”

“Don’t you dare tell me it was your fault,” Connie bites down on the _t_ at the end of the word _fault_. “Do you remember what you said to me after I told you what really happened that night with Vincenzo?”

Kristen swallows a sniffle. “I said it wasn’t your fault because he made the choice to hurt you.”

Connie nods and sets her jaw. “If you forgive Tom for this, he will choose to hurt you again. Don’t let this be the first time instead of the only time.”

“I have dinner plans with him tonight,” Kristen protests. “I can’t just stand him up.”

“Yes you can,” Connie retorts. “I’ve got this.”

 **How exactly have you got this?** Hallie texts her after Kristen is safely tucked away in a corner booth at the _Square Diner_ later that night with a vanilla milkshake and a gargantuan plate of stuffed hash browns keeping her company.

 **I’m going to pull a Mr. Darcy on him,** Connie explains.

 **So you’re going to offer him money to leave her alone,** Hallie deduces.

 **Hell yes,** Connie replies. **If that doesn’t work, you take his toes.**

Hallie grins at the screen of her phone and texts back: **I like the way you think.**

Kristen lives in a nineteenth century brownstone under the monorail tracks. Which in their inception were meant to replace other forms of public transportation in the city, but after budget cuts the monorail only runs through certain neighborhoods. Kristen lives in a part of Gotham that is mostly lower middle class, but she and her grandmother were poor compared to their neighbors. Ed had to look up her address in her personnel file because he didn’t know where she lived. Until tonight.

Connie knows Ed well enough to deduce that he’s doing something ill-advised with a murder weapon he took from the precinct because he isn’t thinking straight.

“You need to leave Miss Kringle alone,” Ed orders as she parks the roadster behind Grendel and gets out. “I’m not going to let you hurt her ever again. I think you need to leave Gotham,” his breath is visible in the winter air, “tonight.”

Tom chuckles. “I get it now,” an ugly smirk twists his mouth, “you’ve got a thing for my girl. That’s too funny. Don’t take this personal,” Tom puts one hand on his shoulder and punches him in the stomach with the other.

Ed doubles over and falls to his knees as the air exits his lungs in a hoarse _ugh_.

“You want some more?” Tom asks.

“Don’t touch him!” Connie grabs Tom by the collar of his coat and he backhands her so hard she hits the ground, the asphalt tearing her stockings and drawing blood.

Ed watches her fall and flashes back to his mother, her neck twisted at the bottom of the staircase while his father looks down on them, to Connie ten years ago with Vincenzo on top of her, to the fresh bruises on Kristen’s arm. Tom grinds to a halt as his heartbeat slows to a crawl. Connie swallows the blood in her mouth and glares at the hulking silhouette of his back while his blood starts curdling in his veins. Ed pulls a knife from his pocket and stabs Tom over and over.

“Oh dear,” Ed says after the first stab, and then keeps on twisting the knife, punctuating each stab with the same guttural noises he made when he was hitting Vincenzo over the head a decade earlier.

Connie stops casting and watches in morbid fascination. It’s the first time she’s ever felt the magic that keeps everything alive leaving a human body.

“Oh dear,” he says again when Tom slumps and flops limp on the street. “Oh dear. Oh no. Oh dear.” Ed makes a clumsy half circle as he skirts around the body toward Connie, but he only has eyes for the bloody knife in his hand. “Oh dear,” he says once more, with feeling before he bursts into hysterical laughter.

Connie flails to her feet and pops the trunk of her roadster to pull out a pair of steamer trunks. “Ed,” she puts a gentle hand on his forearm, “give me the knife.” Ed loosens his grip enough to do what she says. Connie takes the knife and uses magic to send all of the blood from Tom’s body to the assorted empty jars in her kitchen. _Waste not_ , she thinks as she pulls some power from the blood she left on the asphalt to borrow enough strength to do what needs to be done. Connie hands the knife back to him. “No body,” she deadpans. “No crime.”

Ed takes the knife and kneels beside her to dismember the body quickly and efficiently, going through practiced motions once he disassociates the murder he just did with the corpse left behind. There is no blood on his hands or the knife, no congealing ooze to stain the street or the lining of her steamer trunks. _Like magic_ , he thinks. _When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth_. “Was that magic?” he asks.

Connie sighs. “Yes. Hemomancy,” she informs him, “blood magic.”

“You’re a witch,” Ed deduces.

“Yes.” Connie heaves another sigh, impatience flavoring the sound.

Ed turns and looks at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he tries and fails to articulate every obvoluted thought in his head. “I have so many questions,” he says.

“I’m still not talking to you,” Connie retorts.

Ed considers telling her that he loves her too, but he decides that now is not the time. _How does the saying go?_ Ed thinks as he hauls the loaded steamer trunks to his car, _a friend will help you hide, a good friend will help you hide the body? Or good friends help you bury the body, great friends bring a shovel and don’t ask questions?_

Eve is waiting in the kitchen when he returns to Newgrange. “Connie told me what happened,” she informs him.

“You’re a witch too.” Ed nods because it makes perfect sense. “Your fiancée knows, doesn’t he?”

“Of course,” Eve flips her golden curls over her shoulder. “Harvey and I don’t lie to each other.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” Ed wants to know.

Eve scoffs. “Ed, the women in our bloodline have a long history of telling men they love what they are only to end up turned over to witchfinders, or inquisitors, or basically any zealot who might kill people like us because _thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_ , or whatever. Kristen doesn’t know. Hallie only knows because she’s not entirely human either. Harvey is descended from Ba’al Berith—the archdemon who tempts men to murder and blaspheme—and he knew me for what I am the moment he saw me. Connie would’ve told you if she could, but we took a blood oath to our coven not to tell the people we love what we are. Like the blood oath she made me take after that bastard raped her to keep me from cursing his dick off,” she points one perfectly manicured finger at him as the precursor to a threat. “Connie never made me promise not to hurt you.”

Ed gulps audibly because he somehow forgot that Eve is twenty pounds of terrifying in a five pound bag. “I’m in love with her,” he blurts. “I haven’t told her because she isn’t speaking to me, then I stabbed a man to death and telling a girl you love her over a dismembered corpse isn’t how I want to do this, but I’m going to tell her as soon as I clean up the mess I made. I will solve this puzzle.”

Eve arches one perfect blonde eyebrow at him as if to say _is that so_ before she vanishes in a puff of magic. Ed stands in the kitchen squinting into negative space for a long time.

Ed hauls the steamer trunks into the precinct the next day. “Okeydoke,” he grimaces as he pulls on a pair of latex gloves, tension coiling through him taut along his shoulders and down the curve of his spine. “No body. No crime.”

* * *

Hallie is taking a quick fifteen minute break when her phone buzzes. Oswald doesn’t really text, something about an old-fashioned upbringing. Hallie suspects his mother is the kind of person who believes cell phones give people brain tumors. “I’m at work,” she informs him when she takes his call.

“Maroni came to my club,” Oswald snarls, “he told my mother that I’m a psychopath. I’m going to kill him slowly.”

“You’re not,” Hallie deadpans, “psychopaths don’t understand right from wrong. You know right from wrong. You just don’t care. You might be a sociopath, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“I lied to her.” Oswald sounds positively wrecked at the admission. “I’m lying to her about everything. Who I am. What I’ve done. Who I want.”

“Whom you want,” Hallie corrects automatically, “and I don’t want you to tell her about whatever this is between us.”

“Why not?” Oswald demands to know, his voice pitching higher as his nostrils flare wildly.

Hallie shrugs before she remembers he can’t see her. “Your mom doesn’t like me,” she reminds him gently, “and I second that emotion.”

Oswald takes a deep breath and exhales noisily. At the moment he’s got bigger fish to fry than whether his mother likes her or not. Maroni, for one. “I like you,” he says, “very much.”

“I know.” Hallie eyes the clock on the wall of the breakroom. _I like him back_ , she thinks as the warm fuzzies kick in despite her coldblooded body. _I have no idea how that happened_.

* * *

Ed finds Connie reorganizing her books in the library at Newgrange after he disposes of the body and finishes his shift at the precinct. After her granduncle died, her family moved from a house in the Narrows to Newgrange. Ronnie, her granduncle, willed the library to Connie specifically. After her parents found her sleeping in a reading nook instead of her bedroom every night for months, they let her move her bed in there. Connie keeps her clothes in what used to be her bedroom, so it’s basically a walk-in closet attached to the library itself. Ed sleeps in the bedroom directly below hers because the library takes up all three floors of the manor. “I thought Officer Doherty should maybe send Miss Kringle a letter,” he says as he stands by the ladder and looks up at her, “to say goodbye and tell her that he left Gotham.”

“It’s a nice thought,” Connie piles a vertical stack of books that no longer fit in their designated space horizontally, “but there is a much better way to do this and I did that instead. I covered your tracks while you cleaned up the mess you made. Tom was the kind of douchebag who bragged that social media was beneath him. Hell, he didn’t even have a cell phone besides the one issued to him by the police department, which I turned in while Eve used her glamour powers to convince the cops he gave notice and transferred somewhere far, far away. Kristen told me that he became a cop because his parents were murdered during a liquor store robbery and he grew up in the foster system,” she climbs down a few rungs. “Nobody is going to miss him. Not even her.”

Ed forces himself to wait until her feet touch the floor to take her in his arms, snaking one around her waist, his other hand cupping her face while her shoulder curves into the crook of his elbow. “I love you,” he says. Connie tenses, waiting for him to clarify that he only loves her as a friend, while he inhales the pomegranate scent of her shampoo. Underneath that and something lemony on her skin—her body wash, probably—is a sweet odor that he knows well, like fresh soil after a night of rainfall. It’s her natural smell, punctuated by the salt of her sweat because she hasn’t showered yet after work. “I’m head over heels in love with you.” Ed leans into her with his whole body and feels the tension bleed out of her. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner. I’m sorry for every time I must’ve hurt you. I’m sorry I wasted twelve years not being with you—”

“Ed,” Connie sighs, “let go.”

Ed does, reluctantly. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles in a totally unapologetic tone and folds his hands in front of him to stop himself from touching her again.

“I’m not,” Connie turns to face him on her bare heels and considers the logistics of the situation, “but you’re too tall for this to work.” At that, she puts her hands on his waist and walks him back until his knees meet the edge of her mattress.

Ed sits without thinking and is rewarded when Connie straddles him to sit on his lap. Ed swallows as a flush crawls up from his neck to his face, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Connie,” he smooths his hands over her elbows and up her arms to her shoulders as he says her name, “we don’t have to do anything you don’t want. I didn’t tell you that I love you to get laid.”

“Ed,” she raises her eyebrows to cover her lingering insecurity with a challenge, “there’s a girl on top of you that you supposedly love. Is talking really what you want to be doing with your tongue right now? I’m giving you a green light,” she leans in until he can feel her breath ghosting over his lips, “so please just go with it.”

Ed shakes his head vehemently to answer her question and puts his hands on her face, kissing her softly at first, then harder once she kisses back. Connie licks into his mouth and he moans into the kiss as her tongue strokes his. Ed taps her lingual frenulum with the very tip of his tongue, which she likes so much she whimpers and breaks the kiss to catch her breath. “Your glasses are fogged up,” he informs her with tentative smugness.

“Yours too.” Connie smiles at him shyly as she loosens his green tie, undoing the knot and leaving it tucked under his collar while she unbuttons his dress shirt. Ed toes his shoes off before he scoops his hands tentatively underneath her blouse, curling his fingers into the bare flesh of her waist. Connie is warm and squishy, not skinny by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s never thought of her as ugly.

Ed stops touching her to shuck his shirt off after she untucks it from the waistband of his slacks and undoes the last two buttons. Connie blushes, her cheeks going pink at the sight of him underneath her in his undershirt. Ed has never felt bolder than he does right now. When he tugs her blouse over her head, his eyes go wide behind his glasses. “Oh dear,” he swallows thickly because her black lace bra is see-through. Ed suddenly oscillates to feeling overwhelmed by his inexperience because he has no idea how to proceed without disappointing her.

 _Put your mouth on her_ , the eerily familiar voice fizzes up from a dark corner of his mind again.

“Planet Earth to Edward Nygma,” Connie gently pokes his forehead. “Are you okay?”

“I won’t be able to look at you ever again without imagining you in this bra,” Ed blurts. “Do your panties match?”

“Yes,” Connie nods slowly and breaks eye contact, “they’re actually kind of a thong. Like, there isn’t full coverage going on under here.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Ed fogs up his glasses again when he exhales sharply. “Oh dear.” At that, he palms her breasts and lifts them, kneading them softly while he strokes his thumbs over her nipples through the lace. Connie squirms at the friction and digs her fingernails into his shoulders.

 _Remember when we were in Seattle and sometimes you woke up not knowing what we did or where we did it or whom we were doing it with?_ the voice continues.

 _Be quiet_ , Ed thinks.

 _You’re flying by the seat of our pants right now_ , the voice whispers. _You have no idea what to do. Connie deserves better than a hot mess. I can make this so good for her. Let me out_.

 _How?_ Ed wonders. _Who are you?_

 _Who else would the voice in your head be if not you?_ the voice answers. _I’m Edward Nygma. Obviously. You can call me Eddie_.

 _I won’t let you hurt her_ , Ed thinks.

 _Dude_ , the voice says derisively, _we love her. I’ve been waiting over a decade for you to get that. I don’t want to hurt her. I just want to fuck her so thoroughly she forgets what a moron you’ve been making us wait all these years_.

Ed winds up stuck in one corner of his mind looking out through his eyes, trapped in a world that lacks sensation other than sight or sound. It’s so odd. _How does this work?_ he wonders, desensitized and discombobulated.

Eddie unclasps her bra without fumbling the hooks and pulls the straps down her arms to bare her breasts. _Dude_ , he retorts, _shut up and watch_. At that, he flicks his tongue over her nipple. Connie gasps as he sucks it into his mouth. _Oh yes_ , he thinks, _this is what I meant earlier. I wanted our mouth on her breasts_. With that, he moves to lick and suck her other nipple.

Connie wraps her arms loosely around his neck and wraps her legs around his waist, clinging to him while he gently scrapes his teeth over the flesh of her breasts until they’re flushed and hypersensitive. At some point her pretty bra ends up on the floor, keeping her blouse company. Eddie gently lays her down on her back and slides off the bed, pulling her skirt down before he kneels to belatedly remove his socks. Connie sits up, her skirt wrinkling on the floor as she watches him. Eddie rises to his feet, pulls his undershirt over his head, unbuckles his belt, and drops his slacks along with his underwear. Connie blushes again when she ends up looking at his cock, erect and curving toward his navel. Ed has a long torso, long arms and legs, a long slender neck, long fingers and toes, a long thin nose. It isn’t a stretch that his cock is long too. There’s no visible hair on his pale chest except the sparse hair around his flat nipples. It starts below his sternum and grows in a thin line that ends with his dark pubic hair. There isn’t much visible hair on his arms or legs either, despite how dark the hair on his head is. Connie rises to her knees and presses her palms against his chest, her thumbs mapping his clavicles before she gently bites his collarbone.

Eddie gently removes her glasses and undoes the clip in her hair so her dark curls fall to frame her face in black spirals. Connie squints at him, compensating for being nearsighted. “I have an idea,” he informs her, “sit back against the pillows for me.”

Connie does and he crawls to kneel between her legs. Eddie spreads her thighs open wider and bends to kiss the mound of her cunt through the lace of her panties. Connie makes a sharp, desperate noise as her hips lurch forward without her permission. Eddie moves to nuzzle her belly, pulling her panties down to kiss her hipbones and the creases of her thighs before he drags slow licks around the edges of her slit.

“Ed,” Connie whines, “I’ve been waiting ten years for this. Don’t tease me.”

“If that’s the case,” Eddie takes his glasses off before he uses the fingers of his other hand to spread her folds, “then we have a decade of expectations and fantasies to live up to,” he grins at her from between her legs as the evidence of her arousal trickles along her perineum. “Is this how you imagined it? Did you masturbate thinking about our tongue, our fingers, our dick inside you?” Eddie pauses to inhale the heady smell of her. Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth at the sharp intake of his breath. Eddie puts her thighs on his shoulders before he asks, “Did you cover your mouth when you came so we couldn’t hear you screaming our name?”

“I didn’t imagine you talking so much,” Connie squirms while she deadpans because her cunt is throbbing like something out of a bad romance novel, “and I’m not a screamer.”

Eddie grins wider before he flicks the flat of his tongue over her clit. Connie makes high noises in her throat while he licks into her, sucking on her folds and savoring the taste of her on his tongue. When he works one finger inside her, Connie grabs his hair with both hands and pulls harder than she probably meant to as her toes curl against the arch of his back. Eddie adds a second finger, then a third once he finds her g-spot, stroking that sensitive place inside her while he teases her clit with his tongue before he gently tugs it between his teeth and sucks.

When she comes, the lightbulb in her reading lamp shatters and books fall in thuds from her shelves. Connie screams wordlessly, too far gone to say his name. Eddie wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before he crawls up her body to kiss her belly, her navel, her waist, her sternum, her cleavage, the tops of her breasts, her clavicles, and finally the hollow of her throat.

Connie squirms beneath him while he nuzzles her neck, the underside of his cock pressed against the slick flesh of her inner thigh, her fingers still tangled in his hair. “Why the self-pluralizing?” she wonders after she feels capable of words again.

Eddie shrugs. “Let’s just say your prince is in another castle,” he grins at her again.

“What,” Connie stretches out the vowel sound awkwardly because he made a _Super Mario_ reference while they’re naked and doing oral as foreplay.

“I’m Edward Nygma, but I’m not Ed.” Eddie informs her, “Ed tends to repress our darker side, but repressed thoughts and feelings have to go somewhere. I’m every filthy thought, every blackhearted impulse, every desire he pretends we don’t have.”

Connie has no idea where to start. “What do I call you if you’re not Ed?” she asks.

“Eddie,” he squints at her face to gauge her reaction, “you’re taking this pretty well.”

“What, that you apparently have undiagnosed dissociative identity disorder?” Connie deadpans, “or that my previously nonexistent sex life has become a bizarre adult version of _Ed, Edd, and Eddy_?”

Eddie puts one hand on her face and strokes the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. “I think you’re all we’ve ever agreed on,” he says, “we were of one mind the night you were raped and when Tom hurt you. Which is why I’m here now,” he moves closer so the underside of his cock drags over her slit. “I want our first time to be good for you,” he cups her breast with his other hand and brushes the rough pad of his thumb over the hard nub of her nipple, “we both do.”

“Did either of you think to buy condoms?” Connie asks.

Eddie shakes his head. “You’re on the pill,” he says. “You get migraines without it.”

“Which doesn’t mean I can’t get infections,” Connie retorts. “Hell, this means Ed has no idea he isn’t a virgin. Who knows what you might’ve caught from the ladies who taught you cunnilingus?”

“Technically we’re still a virgin,” Eddie informs her, “unless oral counts. But we’re clean. I left Ed a note to get tested after we got home and he did it because we have the same handwriting.”

“Awesome.” Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth when he locks eyes with her because his pupils are so blown the brown of his irises is almost blacked out. “Ed knows what you’re doing with me, with his body, doesn’t he?”

Eddie nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “It’s weird,” he says, “this is the first time we’ve been totally aware of each other. Ed is pointing out that you only bite your lip when you’re overwhelmed,” he curls his fingers against the nape of her neck and holds her gaze. “Are you?”

“I don’t know which is weirder,” Connie deadpans, “that you have dissociative identity disorder or that you gave me a screaming orgasm.”

Eddie laughs and it moves through him into his belly, his cock twitching between her legs. Connie shimmies her hips and he groans at the sensation as the head of him swirls over her hole. Eddie slips into her slowly, eyes fluttering closed and mouth falling open as the aftershocks of her orgasm flicker around him. “I’m not going to last,” he says in a hoarse voice. “You feel amazing. You smell and taste amazing. You’re amazing, Connie.”

Connie swivels her hips to meet his while she kisses the corner of his mouth, then his chin, before she presses a string of kisses along his jawline to whisper in his ear. “How do boners work?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Eddie inhales sharply as she digs her fingernails into the nape of his neck and pulls out until just the head of him is inside her again. “Well, blood flows into the penis and high pressure traps blood there in the corpora cavernosa, the erectile tissue...”

“Yes.” Connie gently bites his earlobe to make him stop babbling and tucks away how licking the shell of his ear makes him thrust up into her until his cock is all the way inside her, bumping her cervix with the head and stretching her deliciously with his girth. “What kind of witch am I?” she asks. “What’s my superpower?”

“Hemomancy,” Eddie huffs a soft little moan, “blood magic.”

Connie tugs at his hair again to scrape her teeth over the column of his neck. “I can make you last,” she says breathlessly, “if you stop talking and fuck me.”

Eddie nods, a quick descent of his chin, before he tilts her head up and kisses her, using his tongue for other things. Connie moans her second orgasm into his mouth, his fingers curling into the flesh of her thigh as his thumb circles her clit. Eddie learns how to angle his thrusts to hit her g-spot and gets so incoherent after her third orgasm that he begs her for his own release. Connie is trembling when he comes inside her, warm and boneless and totally fucked out.

“I love you,” Eddie murmurs fervently before he falls asleep on top of her.

Connie lies there listening to him breathe as her heartbeat slows and pulls the blankets over them both, feeling cozier than she ever has while she dozes off in his arms.

Maroni starts a war against Falcone the next morning. It’s two days before Christmas and Gotham has become a battleground. Hallie wakes up and finds Connie watching the local news. Which is a thing she never does, because the news in Gotham is worse than everywhere else in America. “I’m sorry my boyfriend started a mob war the day your parents fly in from Copenhagen.” Hallie clambers over the back of the couch and plops down beside her.

“Barcelona,” Connie yawns, “they spent a week there as an early Christmas present to themselves and toured the Gothic Quarter without me.”

“Rude.” Hallie leans into Connie and gives her a hug with her arms wrapped around the crook of her elbow. “Are they still flying in tonight?”

“Yes,” Connie sighs. “I’m going to pick them up. I’m still the most powerful witch in this city. Neither rain nor a barrage of bullets nor dead of night and whatnot.”

Hallie looks up at Connie with her chin on her shoulder. “And how was all the sex you had last night? And earlier this morning.” Connie makes a noise that sounds like _eep_. “I heard you scream,” Hallie nudges her ear with the top of her head. “I assumed it was a good scream.”

Connie nods. “Yes,” she grins. “I totally proved my hypothesis about the applications of hemomancy to stamina.”

“You’re like a walking, talking cock ring.” Hallie teases, “or the embodiment of Viagra.”

Connie actually cackles at that, as only a witch should.

* * *

Dr. Ronald Crowley, Ron to anyone he likes, was supposed to be a medical doctor when he grew up. Until he failed organic chemistry and switched his major to psychology. Constance the first, Connie’s grandmother, forced her brother Ronnie, his namesake and Connie’s granduncle, to cut her son off. Ron put himself through undergrad by taking out student loans and working harder than he had ever worked in his life. Susannah Crowley, née Beckham, dropped out of high school during her sophomore year because her boyfriend knocked her up. After they got married, she had another son with her first husband before he left her for his secretary, making the cliché a horrendous reality. Sue went to community college after he got full custody of their sons, transferred to finish her degree, and ended up in the same postgraduate psychology program as Ron. Constance the first didn’t approve of the match, but they got jobs in Gotham after they finished their doctorates, like magic. Torrie sided with their mother against Sue marrying into the Crowley family and never forgave her for bringing another daughter into the bloodline.

Christmas Eve dinner with the Crowleys and the Golds—Torrie, Eve’s mother and Ron’s older sister; Reggie, Eve’s father; Aurelia, Eve’s paternal grandmother; and Thaddeus, Eve’s paternal grandfather—plus Harvey and Ed is subtly tense, as though copper wires are strung invisible throughout the room and pulling everyone present taut. All the witches in the dining hall can feel ambient magic in the air, festooned with Torrie’s festering resentment and crackling with Connie’s anxiety.

Ed winces as she digs her nails into the flesh between his knuckles under the table hard enough to draw blood. _Is she casting_ , Eddie wonders from his corner of their mind, _or just nervous?_

 _I think she’s just nervous_ , Ed answers, _but maybe bloodletting makes her feel better_.

“Interesting,” Aurelia eyes him with her fork halfway to her lips, “two voices in one gorgeously fractured mind. However does that work, young man?”

“Gran,” Eve snaps, “no telepathy at the dinner table.”

Aurelia exhales a melodramatic sigh and takes another bite of ham. Connie uses the blood from his hand to cast a spell and keep her grandaunt out of his mind. Aurelia pouts. “Not to speak ill of the dead,” she huffs, “but you’re a dreadful spoilsport just like your grandmother was.”

Connie rolls her eyes as she swallows a mouthful of scalloped potatoes. “People aren’t toys,” she hisses. “That’s one thing you and my Grams never understood. I won’t allow you to mindfuck my boyfriend for _sport_ ,” she bites down on the _t_ and stabs the scalloped potatoes on her plate with her fork, “so shut up and eat your green bean casserole. I made it myself, and it’s delicious.”

“Yes,” Reggie nods enthusiastically and toasts his niece. “I’d eat more vegetables if Connie were cooking them for me.”

Torrie gives them her best stinkeye as Connie raises her glass to him in return.

After dinner ends, Connie heads straight for the liquor cabinet. Reggie is a bourbon man, so he won’t miss the bottle of limited edition Auchentoshan somebody probably gave to him as a gift.

Harvey finds her first because great minds think alike. “Don’t you want to pace yourself?” he asks.

“Do you think dealing with these people sober is wise now that I don’t have a plate of food in front of me to keep me from saying the wrong thing?” Connie retorts.

“Valid point.” Harvey sits on the couch beside her and pours himself a glass. “Damn,” he sighs appreciatively in the aftermath of his first sip, “that’s smooth.”

Connie hums in agreement and knocks back the rest of her single malt scotch. Eve appears in the doorway with Ed at her heels. “Ed,” Connie points to him imperiously, “you’re the designated driver now. Eve, I’m totally stealing this bottle of scotch from Uncle Reggie and you can tell Aunt Torrie to bite me.”

Eve sits between her cousin and her fiancée. “I’m not telling her that,” she pours herself two fingers, “but only because she might do it.”

Connie tilts her head in owlish concession as Ed sits to her left. “In the night they’re found without being fetched,” he says as she puts her hand on his knee and strokes her thumb over the knob of his patella through his slacks. “In the light they’re lost without being stolen. What are they?”

“Stars,” Connie answers.

Ed takes the hand on his knee and intertwines their fingers. “Correct.”

Connie puts her glass down on a low table before them. “What has rivers but no water, forests without trees, and cities with no people?” she asks.

“A map,” Ed answers.

Connie wiggles her fingers at the bottle of scotch to conjure it into their kitchen. “Yes.”

Ed knows from years of friendship that Connie is a clingy, sleepy drunk. Once she returns to the manor, she flails into her bathroom and uses magic to purge the alcohol from her system. Which is exactly the same as purging alcohol without magic, except it comes out the bottom instead of the top. Ed walks into her bedroom to check on her while she pees in the ensuite with the door wide open. Connie groans when she notices him after she gets sober again. “Welp,” she says, “the romance is gone now. After only two days!” she splays her fingers to gesticulate with ironic jazz hands.

Ed shakes his head slowly. “I don’t care as long as you wash your hands,” he informs her.

“I might take a bath, actually.” Connie gestures at the clawfoot tub as she goes to meet the sink, a shudder passing through her that has nothing to do with the temperature of the water or the soap—black raspberry and vanilla, which sounds ridiculous but smells good—she uses to scrub her hands clean. “I want to get everything about tonight off me.”

Ed swallows thickly while he hovers in the doorway, second guessing himself as his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Can we take a bath together?” he asks.

Connie nods, looking at his reflection in the mirror. “But no sex,” she decides reluctantly.

 _Why not?_ Eddie whines like a kid whose parents took his candy, manifesting in the mirror and folding his arms for only Ed to see.

“Why not?” Ed verbalizes the question with significantly less petulance as he crosses the tiles of the bathroom floor to stand behind her.

“Because my parents are here,” Connie whispers. As if her parents can hear her.

Ed unzips the dress she wore to dinner, sleeveless dark green muslin with black lace overlay, the skirt falling just below her knees. “Aren’t they staying in the guesthouse?” he asks, stroking the hollow between her shoulder blades just above the band of her bra with his fingertips in a way that’s meant to be comforting, not sexual.

“Yes,” Connie fizzles out on the sibilant.

 _We could bend her over the sink and take her right here_ , Eddie grins at him in his reflection. _We could put our fingers in her mouth to keep her quiet_.

“Ed?” Connie looks at him over her shoulder as he presses his palms into the curve of her waist. “I know that look. Eddie is talking to you, isn’t he? Tell me what he said.”

Ed gets hot under the collar of his shirt and bends so his forehead rests against the crown of her head, too ashamed of his other self to look at her in the mirror, let alone in the eyes because his cock is hard in his pants. “Eddie wants to bend you over the sink,” he says, “and take you from behind with our fingers in your mouth to keep you quiet.”

 _I am weak as hell_ , she thinks as her cheeks flush pink. _What’s the saying? It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind?_ “Yes,” she says out loud. “But only if you fuck me, not Eddie.” Ed tenses behind her, his fingertips digging into the flesh of her waist. Connie sighs and leans with her belly against the sink. “If you’re repulsed by sex when you’re not Eddie you need to say so right now,” her voice constricts with insecurity, “or maybe you’re just freaked out by sex with me.”

“I don’t remember what I did when Eddie decided to have sex without me before you,” Ed blurts. “I have no idea how to have sex with you without him.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing,” she retorts with relief evident in her voice, “you’ve been there the whole time while Eddie was fucking me. I think we’re doing pretty well for a virgin whose dark side learned cunnilingus from random Seattleite ladies and a rape survivor who never had an orgasm with another person until you. Hell, your learning curve is basically a straight line.” Connie tugs the straps over her arms so her dress falls to puddle on the floor, stepping out of the circle of her skirt and kicking it aside. “Ed,” she deadpans, “you’re overdressed.”

Ed gulps because she wore sheer black thigh-highs with lace trim and seams up the back. Eddie is disappointed by the lack of garters, but Ed doesn’t care. Instead he grins as he undoes his tie and unbuttons his shirt while she unhooks her bra and pulls her panties off. Maybe he doesn’t like the part of himself that comes up with ideas like bending her over the sink, but Connie does. Maybe he shouldn’t be ashamed of how much he wants her because she feels the same way about him. “I love you,” he says as gently untangles the clip in her hair and leans into her to hook it around the faucet before he removes his glasses and leaves them under the mirror.

Connie braces herself over the sink as the length his cock presses against her bare ass. “I love you back,” she tells him even though he already knows, “all of you. But is it totally inappropriate that you having dissociative identity disorder makes me miss Cartoon Cartoon Fridays?”

“Yes,” Ed grins wider as he gets on his knees behind her, “but it’s been established that we’re both inappropriate.”

Connie is demisexual, and Ed is the only nonfictional person she’s ever wanted in every way. Aesthetically, she’s got a thing for skinny dudes in the abstract that became irrevocably associated with his collarbones when they were teenagers. Platonically, he’s one of her best friends and that hasn’t changed just because they’ve added a new dynamic to their relationship. Romantically, it took her a long time to sort out how she really felt about him because she thought maybe her being in love with Ed was projection or transference in the aftermath of her rape, and then she thought it was just her pathologically self-sabotaging with her persistent thing for someone who might never reciprocate. Sensually, she noticed his long fingers, his knuckles, the creases lining his palms, but all she wanted at first was for him to cup her face in his hands. Sexually, well, in the rare moments she ignored her apparently wrong assumption that Ed was asexual and sex-repulsed to wonder how they might eventually have sex, she thought it would be awkward because neither of them would know what to do and they would be too embarrassed to talk it through. Connie never in her wildest dreams expected them to be good at sex with each other on their very first try, or that on the fourth day of their courtship he would be licking her out with her ass pressed against his face, making ecstatic noises low in his throat.

Ed makes her come twice like that, using his tongue until her cunt is twitching and she’s dripping wet down her inner thighs. Connie makes shrill, desperate noises when he intertwines the fingers of their left hands, thrusting into her so hard and so deep she can feel his sac bouncing against her ass while he moves in and out of her. Ed wraps his other arm tight around her waist and puts his other hand between her legs, rubbing his fingertips over her clit until she comes all over his cock. Ed comes inside her a few shallow, frenzied thrusts later. “Oh yes,” he groans. “ _Connie_.”

Connie is very impressed with his ability to articulate because she responds with an unintelligible sound and slumps to puddle on the floor like her dress before her, their fingers still intertwined at the edge of the sink. “Welp,” she deadpans once her words return to her, “you have no idea what you’re doing, zero out of ten, would not recommend.”

“Your glasses are fogged up,” Ed retorts hoarsely as he puts his own spectacles back on.

“I regret nothing.” Connie uses the edge of the sink to pull herself back to her feet, the mess he made trickling down her inner thighs and sticking to the lace trim of her stockings; she wonders, idly, if jarring it and using it for a spell would freak him out. There is magic in everything, including semen. Instead she flops onto the toilet to let it drip out of her into the bowl, making an offering to the porcelain gods while she rolls her stockings down. “Do you still want to take a bath together?” she asks.

Ed grins at her more crookedly than before. “Oh yes.”

Connie steps into the clawfoot tub while it fills up, bending her knees so her breasts squish where her kneecaps meet her thighs. Ed sits facing her with his legs crossed in the large tub, big enough for an inhabitant to sink underwater when it’s full.

“How does magic work?” he blurts, squinting at her with equal parts myopia and curiosity. “I still have so many questions.”

Connie shrugs, her curls becoming dark tendrils in the water that comes up to her chin as she hunches over her knees. “It’s not a monolith,” she begins. “I’m not really an authority on any kind of magic beyond what my family can do. There is more in heaven and earth and whatnot. Crowley is an English name that means ‘wood of crows,’” she informs him. “It’s also the anglicized version of the Gaelic _O Cruadhlaoich_ , which means ‘descendants of badass warriors.’ _Cruadh_ literally translates as ‘hard’ or ‘hardy,’ but I think badass is better. According to legend, the first witch of our bloodline was conceived when the Morrígan had ritualistic sex with the Dagda to defeat a Fomorian king. It’s been millennia since that ostensibly happened, so nobody knows if that’s the real story or family lore. Eve has a power the grimoire designates as _corvid zoolingualism_ , which means she talks to crows, while the Morrígan in Celtic mythology either takes the form of a crow or is perpetually accompanied by corvidae on the battlefield, so there may be some truth to the myth.”

“What other superpowers does Eve have?” Ed wants to know. “Are they different from yours?”

“Eve brews storms, hears things on the wind spoken miles away, works curses with better control of the blowback involved than anyone in the history of our coven, and uses glamour for anything from hiding her freckles to literally vanishing into a crowd. I’m a kitchen witch and I’m good at garden spells, which is why everything I cook or bake is delicious and my crops always come in so well. I can do something called geomancy, seeing the future in clods of dirt, but it’s really vague so I don’t use it much. I’m also the first hemomancer born to our bloodline in almost four centuries.” Connie provides this information with a peculiar tone, a mixture of hostility he can tell has nothing to do with him, and a sort of pride forged by contempt. “Anna Darvulia—who convinced Erzsébet Báthory she could achieve immortality by taking literal bloodbaths—was the last, until me. Not a hard act to follow if you aren’t a sadist. Aunt Torrie hates me because she’s a cleromancer, and she got attached to the idea of her daughter being the first hemomancer in our bloodline since the sixteenth century before I was born. It doesn’t help that my mother is…”

“A Muggle,” Ed supplies.

“Yes,” she laughs despite herself. “Aunt Torrie considers me to be of inferior stock. Yes, people still talk like that in my family. It’s a blueblood pomposity thing.” Connie grew up in the Narrows, she only attended Gotham Academy because her grandmother refused to let a Crowley shame the family by going to public school, and neither she nor her parents had access to the Crowley fortune until her granduncle died. Despite being a blueblood, she was raised without the wealth her name implies. “There will always be people who find arbitrary reasons to feel superior regardless of the overwhelming evidence contrary to their prejudices.” Abruptly, she changes the subject. “I wanted to tell you for so long. I hoped you would accept me, that you wouldn’t stop being my friend.” At that, salty tears clump in her dark eyelashes. “I never let myself hope you would love me for what I am, or even in spite of it.”

“I think it’s spectacular.” Ed splashes to showcase his enthusiasm, insulted that she would ever think otherwise. As though he might not want magic to be real. Inconceivable. “I wish you would’ve told me sooner.”

“I do, too.” Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth. “I got my powers when I was twelve, after my first period. It’s cliché as hell, but that’s how my bloodline works—first blood, then magic. Do you remember when Umberto Maroni collapsed after he dislocated your elbow?” Ed nods. Connie swept him away to the infirmary in the aftermath and helped the nurse pop his elbow back into place. “I stopped his heart without even trying,” a tremor furrows through her voice as her jaw clenches. “I restarted it, but that’s neither here nor there. I allowed Vincenzo to rape me because I was scared of becoming a monster who could stop hearts with no remorse. I’m not scared now. I was going to kill Tom for what he did to Kristen. I was stopping blood flow to his heart when you stabbed him. I wasn’t going to do it all at once. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel the last sluggish pump of blood through the last chamber of his heart,” she forces herself to meet his eyes, “and he did. I love you for killing him, even if it makes me monstrous.”

 _Dude_ , Eddie says, _we never could’ve loved Kristen Kringle like this. Not after her boyfriend ran into our knife eleven times. If you still had a crush on her, we’d still be pretending to be something we aren’t and we never would’ve known what Connie really is. It would just be you and me without her_.

It’s him and his best friend instead, a witch and a killer whose dark side has a mind of his own, a pair of monsters in love.

* * *

Connie wakes from her slumber later that night to kisses on her neck in the dark, a teasing scrape of teeth over her throat. “Ed?” she murmurs, her voice raw from snoozing with her mouth open.

“Not exactly.” Eddie squints when he props himself up on his elbows to look at her face because neither of them are wearing their glasses and they’re both nearsighted as hell. “Whoever builds me doesn’t want me. Whoever buys me doesn’t need me. Whoever uses me doesn’t know it. What am I?”

“A coffin.” Connie tilts her head owlishly. “Are you threatening me, Eddie?”

“I learned how to take over after Ed falls asleep in college,” Eddie informs her. “I stayed up all night playing video games and eating junk food until we left for Seattle. I thought about coming to see you so many times and telling you how I felt, but Ed had no idea I was there and I didn’t want you thinking I was him. We’re technically the same person. We’re also _not_. I’ve always loved you. I’ve always been there at the back of our mind. Watching you. Wanting you. Waiting for him to wise up and see you the way I do. Which of us do you like better?” he whispers. “Me or Ed?”

 _Oh_ , Connie thinks. Eddie oozes confidence, even arrogance, but when she asked for Ed instead of him it must’ve shaken that right out of his tree. “What has roots unseen, is taller than any tree, up it goes, but never grows?” she asks.

“A mountain,” Eddie answers.

“Yes.” Connie puts one hand on his face and tilts her chin to kiss him slowly and thoroughly, drawing a mournful noise from him when she pulls away. “I guess you weren’t listening when I told Ed that I love all of you,” she huffs. “I like you, Eddie. I like how much you want me,” she informs him shyly, “and your smile. It’s wicked, but in a good way. Ed would never smile like you do. Which is weird, because you literally have the same face. I don’t want you to go away,” she maps the hollow under his jawbone with her pinkie, “but I don’t want you to be a prisoner in your own body and I do want Ed to stop repressing stuff and start being whole again. I thought maybe integration might be a place to start.”

“What?” Eddie whispers.

“It’s called sensory integration therapy,” Connie yawns. “It’s a thing psychologists normally do with children who have trouble processing their feelings, which Ed clearly does because he created another identity to absorb everything he can’t handle. Like sex,” she yawns again because it’s what Hallie calls fuck off o’clock in the morning. “And love.”

Eddie presses their foreheads together. “What’s black and white and red all over?” he wonders, his breath ghosting over her lips.

“A cake made with strawberries and Oreo cookies,” Connie deadpans softly, “but you were probably thinking newspaper because that riddle was originally meant to be solved with a homophonic pun instead of satirical variations thereupon.”

Eddie lies awake next to her after she falls back to sleep. It occurs to him that she never really answered his question.


	6. The Plasticity of Imagination and the Catastrophes of the Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 1x22 (“All Happy Families Are Alike”) and 2x01 (“Damned If You Do…”).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : There is mild breathplay in this chapter. It’s sane and consensual but arguably unsafe, hence the warning in case that’s a squicking point for anyone in the audience. Beware.

**God I want you**  
**in some primal, wild way**  
**animals want each other.  
**Untamed and full of teeth.****

 **God I want you,**  
**in some chaste, Victorian way.**  
**A glimpse of your ankle  
**just kills me.****

Clementine von Radics, “Want”

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 5**  
The Plasticity of Imagination and the Catastrophes of the Flesh 

* * *

**VI**

Monsters symbolize alterity and difference in extremis. They manifest the plasticity of imagination and the catastrophes of the flesh.

* * *

Eve recites a traditional Celtic marriage vow as the new year begins with her wedding to Harvey: “You cannot possess me, for I belong to myself, but while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. You cannot command me, for I am a free person, but I shall serve you in those ways you require, and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand. I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night, and the eyes into which I smile in the morning. I pledge to you the first bite from my meat, and the first drink from my cup. I pledge to you my living and dying, equally in your care, and tell no strangers our grievances. This is my wedding vow to you. This is a marriage of equals.”

Harvey wouldn’t want it any other way.

Connie doesn’t catch the bouquet at the reception even though Eve practically tosses it at her; instead Hallie grabs it automatically to keep the roses from smacking her best friend in the face and puts it down on the table next to her gargantuan slice of cake. Kristen is, for once, dateless. Which is a shocking development. Nathan Kane is there with Gabrielle Kean, a cousin of the notorious Barbara Kean.

Instead of riding off into the sunset and onto their honeymoon in a limousine, Eve drives her husband to Newgrange in her Impala. There are strings of lights in the back garden twinkling without electricity, the flowers and trees blooming in the dead of winter as the backdrop for a handfasting. Ed and Hallie end up at opposite ends of the couch playing  _Super Paper Mario_  because they’re neither witches nor the groom.

Connie performs the handfasting. Eve and Harvey drink from a tarnished pewter goblet, a drop of blood from Harvey and every member in the inner circle of coven mingling with rose wine. “As you are bound to one of us, you are bound to us all.” Connie winds a bright red silk cord around their wrists and hands. “May the bond forged between you with blood and magic, unlike the knot binding your hands, never come undone. So mote it be.”

“So mote it be,” says everyone in the garden simultaneously.

Eve and Harvey seal the bondage of the handfasting with a kiss. Connie watches her cousin tuck the cord in her purse and grins to herself. Leslie corners her while she talks to her plants, a shorter and plumper woman beside her.

“Have you met my sister, Brenda?” Leslie asks, “she’s a kitchen witch, like you.”

“Not until now,” Connie quips and holds out her hand for the shaking. Brenda takes it, a spark of magic passing between them, blood calling to blood.

After she lets go, Brenda cuts straight to the heart of the matter. “Constance died almost four months ago. Why haven’t you called for the oath yet? Why haven’t you bound the coven to you?”

Connie shrugs, tilting her earlobe into the hunch of her shoulder. “I didn’t want Aunt Torrie to make a big stink over it,” she answers, sheepish. Eve swore to her, of course, but nobody else has.

Brenda tugs a pin from her updo, the point glinting sharp beneath the twinkle lights. “Lee and I want to take the oath,” she offers the pin to Connie, “you’re the next leader of this coven whether you want the power or not. It’s time for you to stop dillydallying and get this shit done.”

 _I like her_ , Connie thinks as she takes the pin in one hand and Brenda’s thumb in the other to prick the skin beside her thumbnail.  _Who uses words like dillydallying? Awesome people, that’s who_. Aloud she says, “blood to blood, magic to magic, witch to witch. Do you swear yourself to this coven and me?”

“I swear,” Brenda says without frills or ceremony.

Connie lets the blood drip into a flute of champagne and sips.

Leslie takes the pin to prick her own thumb. “I swear myself to this coven and to you,” she says, “blood to blood, magic to magic, witch to witch.”

Connie sips again, tasting iron and wine to very last drop.

* * *

Eve has a plethora of pastels in her wardrobe, but she’s never been a fan of white. Whenever she wears it, she inevitably stains it. With coffee. With inkblots. With blood. There is buttercream frosting smeared on the skirt of her wedding gown, droplets of champagne drying on the bodice, a black smudge from a tear she covertly shed during a moment of weakness on the neckline, but none of that matters because Harvey devotes himself to undressing her once they’re back at the townhouse. What they’re supposed to be doing is taking a nap before they catch a redeye to Dublin because Eve wanted to visit the faerie mounds on their honeymoon, wanted to see the Neolithic monument her ancestors named the manor for with her own two eyes.

“Mrs. Dent,” Harvey finally pops the last pearl button in a line from the nape of her neck to the small of her back and brushes his mouth over the curve of her shoulder while he peels her gown off, “you can’t be in two places at once.”

Eve shivers as her dress hits the floor, leaving her in pristine white lingerie she managed not to stain. “I’m not,” she whispers as he moves his hands from her waist to her breasts, “I’m here. I’m all yours, Harvey.”

“Good,” he yanks the satin cups down to swirl his thumbs over her nipples. “I think we can sleep on the plane, don’t you?”

“ _Yes_.” Eve hisses and tilts her head back as he kisses her neck, sucking where her pulse thunders beneath her skin.

Harvey stops touching her breasts to pull her close and hold her. “Your heart is beating so fast.”

“I want you,” Eve sighs, “we’ve been waiting so long. I’ve been thinking about this all day.”

Harvey wraps one hand loosely around her neck and kisses her lips while he seriously considers offering the coin in his pocket for her thoughts. “Turn around,” he whispers.

Eve faces him with her back against the front door, her in lingerie with her breasts out, him with his tie undone but otherwise fully dressed. Harvey grins down at her, a flash of white in the dark, and gets on his knees. Eve runs her fingers through his hair as he tugs her panties down, grinning wider at the delicate strings of moisture stretching from her cunt to the crotch of her panties that snap without sound as he works the satin down her thighs.

Harvey strokes the damp blonde curls between her legs with his fingertips and Eve moans softly, a harsh little noise. “You’re so wet,” he whispers reverently. “I could fuck you right now with no more foreplay and you’d love it, wouldn’t you?”

Eve whimpers as he slides two fingers along the length of her slit. “Harvey,  _please_.”

“I never thought you would beg this quickly,” Harvey chuckles.

Eve stops using her words and hooks her knee over his shoulder, letting her hips do the talking. Harvey chuckles again, the sound buzzing through her like electricity before he licks into her. Eve is still moaning his name in the aftermath of her orgasm when he rises, undoes his fly to roll a condom on, and wraps one hand tight around her throat as he thrusts inside her.

Harvey puts enough pressure on her windpipe to make her gasp his name while he takes her breath away, her pulse thundering in her ears. Eve comes with his hand wrapped around her neck, the lack of air intensifying her second coming, appreciating how careful he is to avoid damaging her larynx during the breathplay she asked for. Harvey comes hard after that and collapses into her arms, the door holding them both up while they support each other, his cock still twitching inside her while he goes soft.

“I love you so much,” Harvey whispers. Like a secret. Like a confession. Like a prayer.

Eve collects herself enough to cast a glamour that conceals the bruises from everyone but him while he presses their foreheads together. “I love you back.”

* * *

Oswald invites Hallie to his club one night when his mother feels under the weather. After a series of unfortunate events that begins with a shortage of sparkling wine and ends with the singer calling in sick, Oswald is shrieking like a harpy at someone over the phone when music starts playing.

Hallie pokes the old fashioned standing microphone and lowers it because the regular singer is much taller than her. “Hi,” she curls the fingers of one hand around the stand and waves to the audience with the other. “I’m Hallie Larkin and this is ‘No Light, No Light.’ No copyright infringement shall be intended during this performance. Don’t bother to sue me because I have no money.” At that, she takes a deep breath through her diaphragm and waits for her cue to sing. Oswald drops the phone when she does, her voice throaty and lovely and almost otherworldly, the blue spotlight turning her auburn hair violet and staining her skin with shades of midnight. There’s a tremor evident in her voice as she sings the last rendition of  _tell me what you want me to say_ , proof she hasn’t been onstage since college. Hallie is huffing and puffing as the song ends. Amazingly the noise is smothered by thunderous applause before she ducks backstage and heads straight for her purse.

Oswald waddles into the back to find her perched on an enormous speaker and chugging a bottle of water in loud gulps.

Hallie wipes her mouth with the back of the hand not clutching her empty bottle. “You’re welcome,” she wheezes pointedly in case he came to scold her.

“You were magnificent,” Oswald grins and it looks ferocious under the dull light backstage. “Where did the music come from?”

“I like instrumentals,” Hallie informs him. “I picked the track I wanted and gave the sound guy my iPod. Bada-bing,” she shoots him with a finger gun. “Bada-boom.”

Oswald notices the scales on the inside of her wrist as they catch the light and waddles over to get a closer look. “What is that?” he asks.

Hallie flinches and drops her water bottle, hastily yanking her sleeve over her wrist. “It’s a tattoo,” she snarks back.

“Let me see.” Oswald grabs her wrist gently at first and tightens his grip when she holds fast. Hallie is stronger than him—she doesn’t budge even after he digs his heels in and pulls as hard as he can. It occurs to Oswald that she doesn’t show any skin except her bare hands and face, not ever. “Halcyon,” he says, “show me your arm.”

“Nope.” Hallie shakes her head with slow finality. “Is there somewhere private we can go? If we’re doing this, I might as well go big even though I’d rather go home.”

Oswald takes her to a windowless room upstairs with a table surrounded by assorted folding chairs. Hallie puts her purse and sweater on the metal tabletop and unbuttons her dress. Oswald stands there watching her strip and pile her clothes on top of her sweater: her dress, her legwarmers, her leggings, her thermal undershirt. Hallie unzips her ankle boots and rolls down her socks, adding them to the pile on the table before she folds her arms underneath her breasts. Oswald drags his gaze up her body to meet her eyes, pausing at the pearl hanging below the hollow of her throat from a thin black string, cataloguing each thick slub of visible scar tissue and wishing he would’ve killed her brother more slowly. Hallie loses the staring contest when she turns and extracts a tiny glass bottle from her purse, uncorking it and spilling the contents. Oswald gapes at the line of golden scales down her back, his eyes practically bugging out of his skull when magic pulses in the stale air.

“I got this spell when I decided to tell you what I am,” Hallie explains softly. “It disables any surveillance within a certain radius. Cameras. Bugs. Whatever.”  _I probably should’ve triggered it first_ , she thinks.  _Oh well_.

“That...” Oswald is having trouble processing that information. “That was a spell?”

Hallie nods. “Connie told you she was a witch, Qǐé. It’s your own fault you didn’t believe her.” Eve actually made the spell, a variation on her glamour, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“If you’re not a witch, what are you?” Oswald demands, his voice pitching higher in equal parts rage and fear because he’s finally listening to his lizard brain telling him that he’s been cornered by an apex predator.

“I’m a fúcánglóng,” Hallie sighs, “a humanoid dragon. Legend has it that fúcánglóng hoard treasures underground and create volcanoes when they rise to report on their hoard to the heavens. Legend also has it that European dragons kept getting themselves killed by knights or whatever, but Chinese dragons were smarter and we learned how to take human form. After centuries of inbreeding with ordinary people, there are creatures like me. Neither mammalian nor reptilian. Not entirely human, either. I’m coldblooded. It’s why I wear so many clothes. I’m better at regulating my body temperature than actual reptiles are, but I’m always cold. I have scales,” she holds up her hands palm out to showcase the insides of her wrists. “Here,” she lifts her elbows to show him. “Here,” she turns and points to the hollows behind her knees, “and you saw the ones along my spinal cord. I have oodles of money saved because that’s my nature. I also hoard things other people wouldn’t consider treasures, like gum wrappers and Funko Pops. I wasn’t hatched from an egg, but my mother and her sister were. Meifeng, my grandmother, is almost four thousand years old. Most of us aren’t immortal like her because we’re too human. If you tell anyone what I am, I will hunt you down and gut you like a fish. I like you,” she looks at the floor because she doesn’t want to see a repulsed expression on his face. “I might even be falling for you, but this is bigger than me. It’s my whole family hanging in the balance. I won’t let you use them,” Hallie sets her jaw. “I won’t let you use me.”

Oswald waddles into her personal bubble, ignoring the dregs of his fear in favor of desire. There is no revulsion in him. Only curiosity. “Do you breathe fire?” he asks.

“Nope.” Hallie can almost hear the cogs turning in his mind. “I’m fireproof, though.”

Oswald curls his fingers over her scabrous elbows and strokes them lightly, getting acquainted with the smooth cobblestone texture of her scales. “How exactly did these go unnoticed during sex?” he wonders.

“There was a lot of me tying people’s hands, a lot of me sitting on their faces, a lot of me giving blowjobs, a lot of me going pearl diving, a lot of sex with clothes on, a lot of sex with the lights off, a lot of me doing foreplay on myself,” Hallie shrugs, “but once I started waitressing full time all of that work stopped appealing to me. I haven’t dated anyone longer than a week or two since my freshman year of college. I’ve had a lot of casual sex, though.”

Oswald feels his chest puff out with pride because nobody has ever seen her like this except him. “So you’ve never been naked,” the grin on his face is insufferable, “not with anyone else?”

Hallie shakes her head so fast her hair bounces around her face. “Nope.”

“Then let me be the first.” Oswald cups her face in his palms. Hallie nods and reaches back to unhook her bra, dropping it carefully on the metal tabletop behind her because the floor is gross. Oswald tugs at her pebbled nipples and notices they’re same brown as her freckles, darkly contrasting the ochre of her skin and the gold of her scales. Hallie apparently likes it when he twists her nipples hard between his fingers because she inhales a sharp hiss and hums sumptuously in satisfaction while he does. “Someday you’re going to show me what you do with the vibrator you mentioned before,” he smirks when her eyes fall shut. “I want to watch you pleasure yourself. Soon.”

“Not tonight,” Hallie exhales in a soft whoosh, “tonight I want you to touch me.”

Oswald curls his fingers around her forearm and brushes his thumb over the scales on the inside of her wrist. Hallie covers her mouth with her other hand to stifle the moan he tears from her throat. Oswald puts his other hand on the nape of her neck and smooths his palm along the line of scales down her spine to the waistband of her panties. Hallie pitches forward into his arms as her knees buckle, muffling a louder moan in his shirtfront. Oswald chuckles and releases her wrist, slipping his hands into her panties from the front and back, curling his fingers into the flesh of her rear to hold her where he wants her while he spreads her open with his other hand. Hallie fists her hands around the lapels of his suit jacket as her hips buck. Oswald chuckles again. “Wow,” his smirk is audible in his voice as he teases her, “you’re soaking wet already. How long has it been since anyone else touched you this way, Halcyon?”

“Three…” Hallie whines as he works one finger into her knuckle deep and does something like a swirl that makes her want his cock inside her instead because one finger isn’t thick or full enough. “Three years. Almost four.”

“Such a waste,” Oswald whispers reverently as he pinches her clit between his thumb and forefinger. Hallie unspools with his finger crooked inside her while he twists her clit to provoke a prickling sensation that should be painful but isn’t, somehow. Oswald removes his hands from her panties and licks her arousal from his fingers with an obscene wet sound. “I need to get back to work,” he presses their foreheads together and exhales a reticent sigh. “I have a nightclub to run, after all.”

Hallie kisses his mouth and tugs his bottom lip between her teeth when she pulls away. “I should probably go,” she mumbles.

Oswald watches her clasp her bra in the front and shuffle it around to the back, reluctant to leave her alone. Hallie tugs her leggings on again, straps her cleaver to her right thigh for a left-handed crossdraw, pulls her thermal shirt over her head, buttons her dress back up, shrugs into her calf-length sweater, and yanks her thick chenille socks on before she puts the legwarmers over her leggings and toggles her feet back into her ankle boots. Lastly, she winds her scarf around her neck until it covers her nose and chin. Oswald flushes under his collar because she looks cute all bundled up like that, her outfit monochromatic in charcoal and gray except for the Hufflepuff scarf striped black and yellow.

Hallie paps his face with both hands before she leaves.

* * *

Ed and Connie still have lunch together in his office at the precinct four or five times a week, only now they’re romantically involved, so it’s a lunch date. Connie arches her eyebrows at him when he tries to feed her, because that’s not her jam. Eddie suggests laying her on the autopsy table and putting their head under her skirt once, but Ed doesn’t think Connie would be into the macabre aspect of that particular fantasy. It’s moments like these when he’s most grateful that she can’t read their mind.

“Did you know the dot on an ‘i’ is called a tittle?” Ed asks one afternoon.

“Yes,” Connie answers. “Did you know Hippocrates taught people that wombs floated around in the female body, like an animal within an animal?”

“I knew about the debunked wandering womb theory,” Ed says, “but didn’t Aretaeus coin it?”

Connie shakes her head. “Aretaeus the Cappadocian wrote it down in one of his eight books, but it was part of Hippocrates’ teachings originally. Did you know Freud used the concept of ‘an animal within an animal’ to develop his theories on the unconscious, the mind within the mind?”

 _Like us_ , Eddie thinks.  _We’re lucky her parents left all those psychology books just lying around_.

 _We’re lucky she remembers everything she reads_ , Ed thinks.

 _We’re lucky to have her_ , Eddie retorts.

Ed nods to himself.  _Oh yes_.

“Freud has been discredited,” Connie says, “and he was obviously whack in many ways, but—”

Ed leans in to kiss her softly and without urgency, taking his time to make it last. “You’re my favorite,” he informs her after he pulls away.

Connie tilts her head owlishly, cheeks pink and lips tingling. “I know.”

* * *

Oswald brings flowers and Butch to Falcone at a hospital that quickly becomes a ghost town a few days after Hallie sings at his nightclub. Gordon and Bullock escort them to a safehouse, where they’re ambushed by Fish, who strikes a deal with Maroni before she murders him and flees during the shootout that ensues. Oswald calls Hallie from the warehouse rooftop with adrenaline fizzing in his veins. “I’m the king of Gotham!” he informs her between jittery gusts of triumphant laughter. “I also may or may not have gotten shot in the leg.”

Hallie throws up her hands in surrender even though he can’t see her. “I cannot take you anywhere,” she huffs and hangs up on him to dial Eve.

“I’m on my honeymoon,” Eve says airily when she takes the call.

“I know,” Hallie sighs. “I’m sorry, but my boyfriend is shot and I need you to do a teleportation spell because he didn’t tell me where he was.”

“It’s not a teleportation spell,” Eve retorts. “It’s a spell that allows you to breathe the same air as the person you’re trying to reach.”

Hallie rolls her eyes.  _Witches and their semantics go together like a hand in a glove_ , she thinks. “Eve, please. I’m worried he’ll bleed to death in the process of melodramatically celebrating his victory.”

Eve hangs up on her. Hallie doesn’t hear the dial tone because a loud whoosh of air pops her ears, obscuring all other sounds until she opens her eyes again. When she does, Hallie is on the rooftop with Oswald and Butch, pangs of nausea spooling in her stomach like noodles around chopsticks. “I’m never teleporting again,” Hallie groans.

“I’m the king of Gotham.” Oswald attempts to waddle over and wobbles in place instead. “How was your day, Halcyon?”

“Great,” Hallie snarks back. “Except the dude I’m dating for some unfathomable reason got himself shot tonight.” At that, she picks him up and throws him over her shoulder easily. Oswald squawks indignantly at being manhandled like a damsel in distress. Hallie boops his ass through his pants. Butch gapes at her. “What?” she shrugs with the shoulder unoccupied by Oswald, who is swooning from the blood loss. “I’m stronger than I look.”

Unfortunately there isn’t a conveniently located getaway car anywhere in their vicinity. Butch hotwires a scrap heap masquerading as a vehicle and drives with his boss and a pissed off dragon in the backseat. Oswald is conked out. Hallie uses his belt to make a tourniquet for his bad leg and tears off pieces of his suit pants to pack the bullet hole until she gets somewhere with actual medical supplies. Butch parks in front of the hospital they abandoned earlier. It’s still a ghost town. Hallie puts Oswald in the same hospital bed Falcone was in hours before and sends Butch questing for medical supplies while she cuts his pants off, pouring copious amounts of alcohol on the entrance wound to clean it. Oswald snaps back to reality at the sound of his own shriek. “Halcyon?” he reaches out to grab her forearm.

“I’m here.” Hallie covers his hand with hers and squeezes before she checks for an exit wound. There isn’t one. “I’m going to take the bullet out of your leg,” she tells him gently, “you need to let go.”

“I’ll never let go, Jack!” Oswald somehow manages to reference  _Titanic_  before he groans and passes out again.

Butch sets a tray of assorted medical instruments on the plastic table attached to the hospital bed. Hallie sighs and picks up a clamp. “Let’s get down to business,” she sings softly, “to defeat the Huns!”

“Did they sent me daughters,” Butch warbles in disharmonic encouragement, “when I asked for sons?”

Hallie can feel the metal in his leg the way she can feel raw ore underground.  _I’ve got this_ , she thinks. “Hell yes,” she says aloud.

Oswald awakens drugged and delirious with it. “Halcyon?” he calls.

“Miss Larkin went to work,” Butch informs him, “she left a note, though.”

“Did you read it?” Oswald wonders. Butch shakes his head. “Well,” he exhales an indignant huff, “hand it over.”

 _Oswald_ , it reads,  _the reason I refused to work for my uncle when he asked is that I never wanted to get caught in the middle of a mob war. I could see it coming, but I never would’ve orchestrated it, not like you. I’m not made for this. I want to wait tables and save money and collect things and watch movies while I figure out what I want to do with my life. I know everything will be colder without you, but some things aren’t worth the warmth._

There are three Chinese symbols penned carefully with a comma next to them and a terrible drawing of a bird underneath in place of a signature. Once he can walk again, he pressgangs a hapless man in Chinatown who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time into translating it for him. When he returns to the apartment he shares with his mother she fusses over him, draws him a bath. Oswald feels numb as he sinks into the water, her note crumpled in the pocket of his discarded jacket.

Hallie bid farewell to him by saying  _wǒ ài nǐ_ , which is Mandarin for  _I love you_.

* * *

Oswald tries visiting Hallie at Newgrange a week or so after she breaks up with him to explain his master plan to her and win her back in the process, but he gets stuck when the road ahead vanishes into thin air. Connie feels him there on her land and groans internally. Ed pauses his game when she wiggles her feet out from under his thigh and looks at her. “Is something wrong?” he asks, curiosity and concern saturating his tone.

“Penguin is here,” Connie informs him, “on the bridge.”

Ed frowns. “I thought Hallie dumped him.”

“Yes.” Connie sighs. “I think he wants her back. I’ve got this.” With that, she wraps a giant sweater around her and shoves her sock feet into her overlarge rubber boots.

“Have fun storming the castle,” Ed waves to her before he unpauses his game.

“Miss Crowley.” Oswald scowls at her when she approaches, his mouth unfurling like his umbrella, caution tucked into the corners of his lips and wariness flaring his nostrils.

“Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot,” Connie deadpans, “otherwise known as Penguin. Your ancestor Nigel Cobblepot helped found this city along with my family. Your ancestor Theodore Cobblepot was mayor once. Your great-grandfather lost the fortune you should’ve inherited by investing unwisely in the hotel business and ended up in massive debt to the Falcones. Your mother Gertrud Kapelput is from the branch of your family tree who stayed in Dresden, Germany instead of immigrating to America. Your uncle Tucker Cobblepot was her fifth cousin and he brought her across the Atlantic on a marriage visa. Also a plane, ostensibly. Gotham Academy was the Cobblepot ancestral home before it was a school and generations of Cobblepots are buried there,” she grins at his gobsmacked expression, “I learned all that from tasting your blood.”

Oswald looks horrified, possibly at the idea of his blood in her mouth, possibly at the notion that hemomancers can read bloodlines like magazines. “It’s the Penguin,” he quibbles.

Connie shrugs, one shoulder hunching to meet her earlobe in a nonverbal  _whatever_. “Witchcraft is pretty gross,” she informs him. “Witches are culpable in the genocide of the native Miagani people who came before us, in owning slaves, in pretty much every manmade atrocity that built this country. Roanoke was totally our fault. Witches like me tore the magic from the earth here by the roots to plant our trees and gardens and homes. I bled in the dirt and claimed the land after my granduncle died. Newgrange is mine,” she flails one hand at the road behind her from whence she came, “and I don’t trust you enough to invite you into my home.”

“I suppose your house is a place I can’t get into without an invitation,” Oswald deduces with a huff.

Connie nods. “I don’t really know how it works,” she informs him. “I didn’t cast the spell that keeps people out. I could look it up in the family grimoire because my grandmother died and I’m the leader of the coven now, so that’s a thing, but it was cast by the ancestor of mine who built Newgrange, so the spell is worked into every part of the house. Unless you somehow figure out a way to defy the localized temporal disruption caused by the spell and drop a nuclear bomb on us, you can’t break it. Which you wouldn’t do because then Hallie would be dead and you couldn’t win her back.”

“Halcyon is fireproof,” Oswald points out.

“Which doesn’t mean she’s immune to radiation,” Connie retorts. “I think radioactivity is a whole other kettle of fish, emperor fuckboy.”

“I love her,” Oswald sniffles because he catches the cold easily, “and love conquers all, Miss Crowley. You’ll see.”

“Hallie isn’t a supernatural creature in a paranormal romance novel clinging to false hope of having a normal life,” Connie tucks her hands into the pockets of her sweater, “she just doesn’t want to get trapped in the criminal underworld like a draconic Persephone to your waddling Hades. I think you want someone to sit on a throne beside you while you call yourself a king. Hallie doesn’t want a throne, or a crown, or a kingdom. Unless you compartmentalize your criminal empire and your romantic entanglement, you can’t be with her. If you’re not prepared to compromise, then you need to move on.” 

With that, she turns and walks into the woods, the gnarled shadows cast by the trees swallowing her whole. Oswald stands there long after her silhouette is gone, turning her advice over in his mind.

* * *

Connie starts repurposing sensory integration therapy to use on both versions of her boyfriend, touching Ed while Eddie talks to him to determine whether they can experience the sensation of her touch simultaneously. It doesn’t work until the week Connie gets something in the mail. Ed brings the package in from the mailbox by the bridge. After she jumps and squeals, Connie uses her kitchen scissors to open the package, unfurling the black lace and pale green silk underbust corset with garter straps attached. Connie stretches the fabric experimentally because things she orders from overseas don’t always fit without the give necessary for a fat woman to wear anything that isn’t tailored or customized well.

 _Oh dear_ , Ed thinks, gulping audibly before a grin spreads goofily over his face.

 _I know green is her favorite color too_ , Eddie says,  _but I hope she bought that for us_.

“Ed?” he snaps out of his mind at the sound of her voice. Connie gives him a grin of her own, tinted with shyness that bleeds into a darker edge of anticipation. “Do you want to help me put this on? I might need help with the laces.”

Ed nods so fast his hair flops over his forehead. “Did you buy that for us?” he asks, matching his pace to hers as they make their way to her bedroom closet.

Connie unlaces the corset as they go and strings the black silk ribbon through the first two holes for safekeeping. “Nope,” she shakes her head and one black curl falls cockeyed from the clip holding her hair up, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it too. I have a whole lingerie chest in here,” she gestures to a box made of gleaming dark wood beneath the window overlooking her greenhouse. “I like how silk and lace feels on my skin. I like matching underwear. I like looking like a pinup girl underneath my clothes,” her cheeks go pink at the admission. “It’s like having a secret.”

 _Dude_ , says Eddie.  _Tell her we love her. Tell her what you asked Eve before Christmas_.

Ed blurts out a riddle instead. “What loses its head every morning and gets it back every night?”

“A pillow,” Connie answers, wondering if that means he wants to have sex after this because pillows are on a bed even though sex doesn’t always happen on a mattress. It’s not a stretch, in context. “I can fly with no wings and cry without eyes. What am I?”

“A cloud.” Ed folds his hands in front of him, waiting to follow her lead because corsetry isn’t a thing he does by himself. Connie hands it over to him before she takes her clothes off, undoing the zipper of her skirt so it puddles around her feet and unbuttoning her blouse with deliberate flicks of her fingers while she holds his gaze.

Connie doesn’t remove her bra or panties, a set of black cotton with creamy white lace trim and tiny polka-dots. Instead she puts the corset on and turns her back to him. “Planet Earth to Edward Nygma,” she rolls her eyes after nearly a minute of nothing passes, “lace me up, please.”

Ed does so meticulously, keeping the ends of the ribbon even after each eyelet and chewing on his lower lip while he concentrates.

 _Put our hand between her legs_ , Eddie suggests after he ties a bow and moves his hands to map the familiar curve of her waist as cinched by the corset.  _Tell her we like the polka-dots_.

“Ed?” Connie turns and faces him. “Eddie?”

Ed doesn’t know which part of him grabs her by the hair and kisses her ferociously, but he does so whether he came up with the idea or not. Connie opens her mouth with a gasp that makes his cock twitch and throws her arms loosely around his neck as she kisses him back. “Eddie wanted you to know we like the polka-dots,” he informs her breathlessly after he breaks the kiss.

“Noted,” Connie retorts softly.

 _Let me out_. Eddie is suddenly visible behind her despite a lack of corporeality.  _It’s my turn_.

Ed nods, a quick descent of his chin obscuring the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat. Eddie takes off their glasses and reaches around her to put them on her dresser, smoothing his other hand up from her hip to unhook her bra. “I like the polka-dots,” he says after her bra is on the floor and her panties are off, because it bears repeating, “but I think we like you better in this and nothing but this.”

“I have stockings.” Connie blushes as he strokes one of the garter straps between his thumb and forefinger, his other fingers curling into the outside of her thigh. Eddie goes to pick a pair out of her lingerie chest, understanding intimately what she meant when she told him that she enjoyed the feel of the fabric. It’s all smooth and delicate. Connie has never felt delicate in her life. Hell, she couldn’t be delicate if she wanted to.

 _I might be the supernatural creature in a paranormal romance novel who clings to false hope of having a normal life_ , she thinks.  _Maybe that’s why I haven’t sworn the coven to me. Aunt Torrie was just an excuse. I need to step up and, like a witch—with a ‘b’—get stuff done_.

This epiphany scratches out like a record skipping when Eddie kneels on the floor in front of her and gently lifts her leg to roll one stocking up to her thigh, fastening the garters for her. It’s something Ed has seen her do before many times over the years with a skirt on, but he always averted his eyes. As if looking at her was something to be ashamed of.

 _Started from the bottom now we’re here_ , Connie thinks as he rolls her other stocking on. It’s another pair of thigh-highs with lace tops, virtually identical to every other pair she owns except the stockings themselves are fishnets instead of sheer black nylon.

Eddie spreads her legs when he puts her foot down and hunches to part her folds with his tongue, just for a taste. When he pulls back, he grins wickedly up at her and makes a show of licking his lips. “Yum.”

Connie flushes a shade of pink darker than her cunt, heat coiling through her hard enough to make her shiver and clutch at his shoulders.

“I have an idea,” Eddie informs her after he rises to his feet.

“What?” Connie asks, going on tiptoe to scrape her teeth over his collarbone before she tugs on the hem of his t-shirt.

Eddie pulls his shirt over his head and is rewarded when Connie leans into him, her soft breasts pressing against him as she gently bites one of his nipples. “Get on your knees,” he says, “and suck our dick.”

That’s one thing she hasn’t done before, so Connie asked Hallie—who prefers oral sex to intercourse for draconic reasons—how to give a good blowjob a couple weeks ago. Hallie was embarrassed at how explicit she got, but Connie appreciated the crash course. Eddie isn’t shy about wanting to do bad things to her, but neither he nor Ed have ever pushed her into doing anything she doesn’t want to do. Except it’s not that she doesn’t want to do this, she just doesn’t know how.  _Let’s see if I can reap the benefits of her sexual wisdom_ , she thinks, tilting her head up to hold his gaze as she kneels and pulls his pants down along with his underwear. “Do you want my breasts too, or just my mouth?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Eddie tangles his fingers in her curls and inhales sharply when she flicks her tongue over the base of his cock a few times before licking one long wet line from root to tip. “I want to fuck your face.”

“Noted.” Connie wraps one hand around his cock and cups his balls in the other, rolling his sac between her fingers and squeezing gently. Swirling her tongue over the head of him makes him moan and clench his fist in her hair. Swallowing as much of him as she can without choking makes his breath hitch around a litany of her name. Connie hollows her cheeks out, moving her head up and down his shaft, using her tongue to stroke along the length of his cock while she sucks on him.

 _Oh dear_ , Ed thinks, caught somewhere between embarrassed at how vulgar his unconscious is and pleasantly surprised by how well Connie took him asking to fuck her face.

 _Dude_ , Eddie retorts.  _Look at her with our dick in her sweet, wet mouth. I know you can’t feel it, but she’s doing amazing things with her tongue_.

Connie rolls her eyes up to meet his gaze as that filthy thought passes between them.

 _Oh dear_ , Ed thinks again, momentarily forgetting that she can’t read their mind.

“Connie,” Eddie gasps, hips lurching forward to thrust himself deeper into her mouth, his grip on her hair clutching and desperate. “I’m—”

When he comes, it’s too much for her to swallow it all. Connie licks what didn’t go down her throat from her chin, her hands. Eddie watches her lick her fingers clean with his pupils blown so wide the brown of his eyes is almost blacked out. “Welp,” she exhales a hoarse laugh and strokes her thumbs over his hipbones as she rises to her feet, “I think my first blowjob went pretty well. Don’t you?”

Eddie nods with slow vehemence before he kisses her again, licking into her mouth and tasting himself on her tongue.

There is a full length mirror in the room. Connie kept it covered when she was in high school, but now it’s uncovered and propped up against the wall. Eddie sits naked in her overstuffed armchair and pulls her into his lap with her back to him so she faces the mirror, using his knees to spread her legs. When he drags one finger from her perineum along the length of her slit, he grins at how slick she is, his laughter ghosting hot and heavy over the nape of her neck. “Did sucking our dick turn you on?” he whispers conspiratorially in her ear and swirls two fingertips into her hole. Connie nods, blushing as he lightly strokes his fingers over her folds, teasing her. Eddie nuzzles her neck while he works her open. Connie squirms in his arms, the silk ribbon that holds her corset together slithering over his sternum and stomach, her hips bucking against his hand while he fucks her with his fingers, the heel of his palm grinding deliciously over her clit. “Look at you,” Eddie whispers fervently. “Connie, you’re amazing.”

Connie whimpers as the buildup to her orgasm coils between her legs. “ _Eddie_.”

Eddie brings his hand to her lips, looking in the mirror to watch her suck the evidence of her arousal off his fingers the same way she sucked his cock. Connie ends up with her back to the glass so they’re face to face while she rides him. Eddie shifts his hips under her to change the angle of his shallow thrusts while she bounces up and down on his cock, lifting her breasts together and licking both of her nipples at once before he sucks on them. Connie makes a high little noise that’s not quite a scream, her whole body trembling as her orgasm shudders through her. When he comes inside her, Ed feels the orgasm too. “Oh,” they both moan. “Connie, we did it.”

Connie whines, still clenching around the softness of them within her while she recollects herself. “I know,” she quips hoarsely, “we had the sex. It’s a thing we do now.”

“No,” Eddie shakes their head, “we both came. Ed felt it too.”

“Awesome!” Connie smiles hard enough to make her cheeks ache before she offers them a fistbump, during which they both feel the press of their knuckles to hers.

Ed laughs with himself into the space between her neck and shoulder, and they are of one mind again until Eddie fades back into his corner of their consciousness, temporarily satisfied.

* * *

Hallie is approached by angry triad members after her shift one night. According to the goons, they heard she was dating the Penguin and that’s why he left her uncle alive. When they attack, one gets close enough to choke her. Hallie coughs as his hands wrap around her neck and spews a white hot flame into his face.

 _Holy red sun cows of Apollo_ , she thinks, wheezing in the aftermath of the unwanted asphyxiation,  _guess I can breathe fire after all_.

* * *

Connie wheedles Eve into hypnotizing Ed after she returns from her honeymoon. Ed relives the night his father pushed his mother down the stairs and broke her neck, answering the riddle of how Eddie was made.

Harvey starts killing again, targeting the Maroni crime family leftovers and deliberately avoiding major holidays to keep Albert locked away in Arkham. Vernon Wells, a corrupt ADA operating in the criminal underworld as Adrian Fields, is the first to die. Then he kills the skippers: Luca “Toots” Mareli, Richie Pantone, Joseph “Curly” Bandano, and Alfrizi Esposito. Tommy Bones the enforcer is married to Sal’s daughter Pina—the last surviving member of the Maroni crime family. Harvey decides to leave the young lovers alive, saving them for later.

Oswald, meanwhile, weeds out the rest of the Falcones: Carmine’s brother Fabrice, Fabrice’s son Frank, Carmine’s grandnephews Gaetano and Romano, Carmine’s daughter Sofia and her bodyguard Angelo Mirti. Sofia’s son Luigi. Sofia’s godfather Bobby Gazzo, whose sons were murdered by Maroni once upon a time. Carmine’s caporegime Stephen Capello, then Eddie Skeevers and his brother Jefferson, a drug kingpin who did business for both Falcone and Maroni. Carmine’s son Alberto is institutionalized and Kitty—his daughter—has gone underground with Christian Castillo, the bodyguard she inherited from her late grandmother Louisa. After that he brings the yakuza and the triads into the fold by killing their leaders, all but one. Ekin Tzu is another story.

Janice Porter, Harvey’s college sweetheart, becomes the newest ADA in Gotham City after Vernon dies.

Theodore Galavan sees a void in the city and decides to fill it with chaos.


	7. Monsters Are Indicators of Epistemic Shifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 2x01 (“Damned If You Do…”) and 2x06 (“By Fire”).

**I**

**It’s okay to hang upside-down like a bat,**  
**to swim into the deep end of silence,**  
**to swallow every key so you can’t get out.**  
**It’s okay to hear the ocean calling your fevered name**  
**to say your sorrow is an opera of snakes,**  
**to flirt with sharp and heartless things.**  
**It’s okay to write,** _ **I deserve everything**_ **,**  
**to bow down to this rotten thing**  
**that understands you, to adore the red**  
**and ugly queen of it, to admire**  
**her calm and steady rowing.**

 **It’s okay to lock yourself in the medicine cabinet,**  
**to drink all the wine, to do what it takes to stay**  
**without staying. It’s okay to hate God today**  
**to change his name to yours, to want to ruin all that ruined you.**  
**It’s okay to feel like only a photograph of yourself,**  
**to need a stranger to pull your hair and pin you down.**  
**It’s okay to want your mother as you lie alone in bed.**  
**It’s okay to brick to fuck to flame to church to crush to knife**  
**to rock to rock to rock to rock to rock and rock.**

 **It’s okay to wave good-bye to yourself in the mirror,**  
**to write,** _ **I don’t want anything**_ **.**  
**It’s okay to despise what you have inherited,**  
**to feel dead in a city of pulses. It’s okay**  
**to be the whale that never comes up for air,**  
**to love best the taste of your own blood.**

**II**

**This house is dirty, but comfortable.**  
**Behind each crooked door**  
**waits the angry weather of a forgiveless child.**  
**I cannot help but admire this horrible**  
**power of mine, how each small thing**  
**can become a death: the lost house key. A spoiled egg.**  
**A howling dog. There is no prayer or pill for this.**  
**It is a ruthless botany; I might as well**  
**be buried in the yard. I have no one to blame.**  
**Not the mother who sang to an empty cradle.**  
**Not the Dog of Spite who bit my hand,**  
**just this long-legged sorrow**  
**who trails my every joy like a dark perfume.**

 **You have my permission not to love me;**  
**I am a cathedral of deadbolts**  
**and I’d rather burn myself down**  
**than change the locks.**

Rachel McKibbens, “Letter from My Heart to My Brain/Letter from My Brain to My Heart”

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 6**  
Monsters Are Indicators of Epistemic Shifts

* * *

**VII**

Monsters exist in margins. They are thus avatars of chance, impurity, heterodoxy; abomination, mutation, metamorphosis; prodigy, mystery, marvel. Monsters are indicators of epistemic shifts.

* * *

Oswald spends the next few weeks occupying the corner booth in her section during the lunch rush. Hallie grins and bears it, taking orders for him and Butch and Gabe. After the first week she reconsiders quitting smoking because he keeps waving her over for little things like replacing creamer. Or new foil packets of butter he doesn’t use. Or a sample tray of every type of salad dressing from the walk-in even though he didn’t order a motherfucking salad. Or extra coleslaw to go for his mother.

Hallie buys a pack of cigarettes and inhales half of them on her break, hoping the reek clinging to her uniform will be enough to make him go away. Hell, she’s a dragon in a person suit. It’s not like the carcinogens in firsthand smoke—or secondhand, for that matter—can hurt her.

Oswald starts wearing an expensive watch and rings on every finger, gold and gems because he must’ve read up on fúcánglóng lore. Later, her cousin Jasper—who is being groomed to inherit the restaurant after Dorian retires and makes better mù xū than her father, not that she’ll ever say that to his face—confesses that Oswald sent Butch to inquire about the mating rituals of her kind. After that she finds little gifts in Connie’s mailbox by the bridge every day: uncut gemstones, shiny gum wrappers folded into origami cranes, and jewelry with notes in Mandarin attached to the boxes.

Ekin Tzu is sitting in the corner booth at high noon one day in Oswald’s place. “Fěicuì,” he greets her with a nod.

“Yízhàng Ekin,” Hallie sighs, “I’m working.”

“Actually,” her boss cuts in, “I’m giving you a paid sick day.”

Hallie gapes. “But we don’t _have_  paid sick days,” she protests, “we’ve  _never_  had paid sick days in the eleven years I’ve worked here.”

“Fěicuì,” Ekin says, his tone stern and condescending, as if she’s a wayward child instead of a goddamn adult, “sit down.”

Hallie slumps in the booth across from him, cataloguing the bodyguards situated throughout the diner and secure in the knowledge that she could take all seven of them simultaneously.

Ekin sighs at her terrible posture. “I taught you better, wàishēngnǚ.”

“You taught me how to protect myself after Darius started using knives on me,” Hallie snarks back. “You don’t get to tell me how to sit.”

“You’re the only reason I’m still alive, Fěicuì.” Ekin informs her. “Qǐé has made an example of every daailóu except me.”

“I’m not getting back together with him,” Hallie says. “I can’t be that person, yízhàng. I’m not made for it.”

“Yes,” Ekin retorts solemnly, “you are. I know Darius lived for years without his toes. I know you keep his bones in a box among your treasures. I know you defeated one of Victor Zsasz’s henchwomen in single combat after a double shift. I know you took her toes as a warning and threated to take her nose as well. Fěicuì, you are ruthless when you need to be. I believe you’re afraid of becoming what you have always been: a pearl among swine, a dragon among humans, an apex predator, a queen of the underworld.”

“I’m not scared,” Hallie whispers, her voice soft and sure. There is a part of her that sees prey when she looks at other people. Trouble is, she also thinks of them as  _her_  people. “I’m just not like Qǐé, or you. I don’t want to rule in hell.”

“No matter how many orders you take or how many plates you carry,” Ekin says, “you will never be satisfied to serve in hell either. Why not meet Qǐé halfway and be happy with the one you love?”

Hallie shakes her head and shuts her eyes in a futile attempt to avoid the overwhelming epiphany that her uncle isn’t wrong.

* * *

Eve asks Connie to have lunch with her after she returns from her honeymoon. “So,” she points at Connie with her fork, “the reason it took us longer than it should’ve to find you and Harvey at Christmas dinner is because your boyfriend took me aside to ask if there were any rings in the Crowley family you liked.”

Connie drops her own fork and knife in the middle of meticulously cutting her pancakes into bite-sized pieces, the silverware clattering obscenely against the edge of her plate. “What,” she yelps, her voice pitching higher with alarm.

“So,” Eve arches one perfect blonde eyebrow, “you don’t want to marry him? I remember you planning that whole Samhain wedding in high school and pretending he wasn’t the groom in your doodles.”

“It makes sense for me to get married on Samhain,” Connie protests. “Halloween is my birthday.”

“So you wouldn’t be pissed if I told him about our great-grandmother Ligeia’s ring?” Eve takes another bite of her omelette.

Ligeia Crowley, née Wayne, lived to be over a century old. When their great-grandmother Rose proposed, she gave her intended a white gold art deco ring set with a five and a half carat green tourmaline. It was left to Connie in her will because tourmaline is her birthstone.

Rose Crowley was born Algernon, she was known as the first male witch in the bloodline until her sister witches realized she was transgender, and Ligeia married her for exactly who she was. There was no word to describe Rose in Western culture at the time, not until  _transsexual_  was coined in the forties and repurposed in the fifties as a precursor to the word  _transgender_. Rose was also the only child of her parents, and they accepted her more easily than others that weren’t a witch or an eccentric millionaire would’ve.

Connie pushes her plate into the center of the table and slumps over the tabletop. “I love that ring,” she murmurs.

“I know you do.” Eve wiggles her fingers and sends a low-key puff of wind to keep one of her curls from getting syrupy. “I remember when Great-Grams let you try it on and Uncle Ronnie had to tell you it was cursed to make you take it off.”

“Ugh!” Connie flushes and buries her face in the crook of her elbow.

After her lunch break ends, she gathers her thoughts during the other half of her shift at the library. When she picks him up at the precinct, Ed kisses her hello on the staircase in the bullpen. It’s the most public display of affection he’s ever given her. Alvarez, homicide detective and tick-tack enthusiast, makes hooting noises in the background.

Connie slips her hand into the back pocket of his slacks. Ed pulls back to look at her, his smile hesitant. “Whatever you think you have to prove,” she deadpans, “I don’t mind giving you a hand.”

Ed laughs and kisses her again. Connie almost forgets how freaked out she got at lunch, but not quite.

“Miss Crowley.” Captain Sarah Essen greets her with a nod from the stairwell. Detective Sergeant Essen was the cop she talked to when she filed charges against Vincenzo ten years ago, before major crimes took the case and botched the investigation by losing crucial evidence. Essen had apologized to Connie for whoever broke the chain of custody and took the verdict in her case as a personal blow.

“Captain.” Ed grins, wide and without shame. At least that’s progress.

“Hello.” Connie flushes and holds up her hands in mock surrender before she realizes nobody told her to stick them up.

Essen folds her arms, but the smile on her face undercuts any potential hostility in her posture. “Did you get my Christmas card?”

Connie nods. Essen has been sending her Christmas cards for a decade, the latest featuring her daughter playing reindeer games. “How old is Amy now, four?”

“Almost five,” Essen glows proudly, “she starts kindergarten this year.”

Ed intertwines their fingers, his thumb stroking along her forefinger. Connie adjusts her glasses with her other hand. “Awesome,” she grins sheepishly. “I’m sorry we got carried away.”

Essen turns on her heels, duty calling. “Invite me to the wedding,” she orders as she walks away. It’s teasing, but not a total joke.

“Yes ma’am.” Ed salutes her, the gesture heartfelt and guileless.

Connie unwelcomes the tension as it takes root in her shoulders.  _Whoop_ , she thinks.  _There it is_. “It’s too soon,” she blurts once they’re on the sidewalk next to her roadster.

“What for?” Ed sees the expression on her face and frowns once he realizes her mouth is pressed into a thin line, which she only does if she’s upset. “What’s wrong?”

Connie sighs, untangling her hand from his to fold herself into the car. Ed takes his place in the passenger seat, folding his hands in his lap and looking expectantly at her over his shoulder after he buckles himself in. “It’s too soon for marriage,” she clarifies. “Eve told me what you asked her about at Christmas dinner over lunch today. We’ve only been together for seven weeks. It’s too soon.”

“False,” Ed retorts. “We’ve known each other for twelve years. We’ve lived together for three years. We share most of our meals. We carpool to work every day. We bought a bed together last month, which is a thing only serious couples do. We sleep together in the literal and figural sense of the phrase. We have sex every night and sometimes in the morning. We spend our days off together. We never get sick of each other. We’re in love,” he twists his fingers together to give himself something to do with his hands, “and I spent over a decade repressing how I felt about you. I don’t want to waste more time.”

“It’s not a waste,” Connie hisses the sibilant and bites down on the consonant at the end. “I was trapped in a vicious circle while you were bottling stuff up. I loved you, I resented the girls you liked, I hated myself for having those ugly feelings—especially since two of the girls you’ve liked are very special to me—and I hated you because you’re the worst at women who aren’t me. It wasn’t a waste of time because I learned what I want in a relationship. I love all that domestic stuff you mentioned, but I think you forgot about romance because we ended up being practically married before we started dating. I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she tugs her lower lip between her teeth. “There are so many things I want to do in a relationship and I want to do them all with you. I don’t want to skip ahead to the end when we’ve barely even begun. Hell, we haven’t even gone on a real date.”

Ed swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “What do you have to give before you can keep it?” he asks.

“Your word,” Connie heaves another sigh. “What can you break without touching it?”

“A promise,” Ed answers.

“I need you to promise me you won’t propose until we’ve been dating for at least a year,” Connie says, “and I don’t want to actually get married until I’m at least thirty.”

“I promise,” Ed nods solemnly, “but what happened to your great-grandmother Ligeia’s ring?”

Connie decides to bite the bullet. “It’s in my jewelry box. There’s a secret compartment. I never bothered to recast the protection spell on it that broke when Great-Grams died, so a non-witch could open it. If he wanted to.”

 _Dude_ , Eddie thinks,  _that means when we pop the question she’s going to say yes_.

Ed nods to himself and leans over the gearshift, sealing his promise with a kiss.

* * *

Commissioner Loeb steps down after Oswald threatens his life as a favor to Gordon. Theo Galavan introduces himself to the denizens of Gotham during the ensuing press conference, at which Essen is made the next commissioner. Meanwhile, his sister breaks into Arkham to recruit the patients as the first step in his master plan: using monsters to cleanse Gotham with blood and fire. Theo kidnaps Mayor James and holds him prisoner the week his gang, the Maniax, throws seven dead shipyard workers from the roof of the  _Gotham Gazette_  headquarters. Jerome, leader of the Maniax, decides to incinerate a bus full of cheerleaders the next day. There is a massacre at the precinct in the aftermath of his spirited diversion that claims the lives of Commissioner Essen and a cannibalistic member of the Maniax, among a few dozen others.

Ed is shot in the arm tackling Kristen away from the line of fire. Leslie hides underneath her autopsy table with the dead rapist on it until the gunshots fall silent, texting Connie as she creeps into the bullpen to inform her that her boyfriend has a bullet lodged beneath his deltoid. Kristen thanks Ed for saving her life, gives him painkillers that he swallows dry, and rides in the ambulance with him to the nearest hospital.

“Miss Kringle,” Ed slurs happily as the ambulance wails around them, “you’re like the sun.”

Kristen smiles at him, her cheeks tinged pink, and he grins back.

“Connie,” he grins wider, “Connie is a solar eclipse. I love her so much she blocks out the sun.”

Kristen flushes darker with shame and folds her hands in her lap to stop herself from touching him. Connie is waiting at the hospital when they arrive—she’s his emergency contact, has been since undergrad, after his father mysteriously fell into a persistent vegetative state during their junior year. When the nurse tries to stop her from going into the operating room, Connie points at the words stenciled on the wall:  _Ronald Alan Crowley Memorial Wing_. “That’s my name on the wall,” she informs the nurse, “my family built this wing and I will tear it apart if you don’t allow me to stay with him.”

Kristen has never seen her friend so undone, never seen her raise her voice to somebody who is just trying to do their job. “Connie,” she puts one hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently, “it’s all right. Mr. Nygma is fine, and he’ll be good as new once you let the doctors and nurses do their work.”

Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth and crosses one arm over her chest, covering the fingers crooked over her clavicle with her palm. Kristen stands with her while they wheel Ed away on a gurney to remove the bullet, irrigate his wound, and check the muscles in his arm for damage before they stitch him up.

“Kristen,” Connie sighs, “you’re blushing like you do when you feel guilty about something.”

Kristen tenses from the set of her shoulders down along her spine. “I apologize,” she whispers. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I do.” Connie turns and faces Kristen to hold her gaze while she talks. “Ed saved you. I know that feel, from the night he almost bludgeoned my rapist to death when we were teenagers. That was the night I realized I loved him, so I get it, but I’ve known you for seven years now and I’ve learned a few lessons. There’s a reason things have never worked out with any of your boyfriends. It’s not because you pick the wrong guys, although you have an uncanny knack for that. It’s because you pick guys who aren’t what you’re looking for,” she gnaws on her left thumbnail without biting it to the quick, “you want someone who takes a bullet for you instead of someone who leaves nonconsensual bruises on your arm. That’s good,” a quiver threads along the words before she sets her jaw, “but I’ve wasted my whole life hurting myself to avoid hurting other people. That’s why I never told Ed all of the cruel things you said about him. That’s why I never called you on how much you enjoyed leading him on. I love you,” somehow her voice softens and gets sharper all at once, “you’re one of my best friends. There are millions of men for you. Ed is the only man I’ve ever wanted. I won’t allow you to have him.”

“What is wrong with me?” Kristen groans her frustration out, like turning a valve to release the looming pressure, and sinks into a chair. “Why do I only want things once I can’t have them? Mr. Nygma was interested in me for over a year. I liked the attention, but I wasn’t attracted to him until now.”

“Welp,” Connie flops into the chair to her left without bothering to smooth her skirt underneath her thighs, “he took a bullet for you. It’s not a stretch that saving your life made you see him differently, but he’s my boyfriend now. Hell, he asked Eve over Christmas if there were any heirloom engagement rings in the Crowley family I liked that he could use to propose.”

Kristen folds her hands in her lap and looks up at her friend. “I’m happy for you,” she says softly, “please don’t think otherwise.”

Connie flails one hand to wave those bad vibes away before she nudges Kristen gently with her shoulder. “I’m sorry you were in the middle of a massacre today,” she huffs. “What is it with motherflipping white boys and mass shootings?”

Kristen laughs despite herself, slumping until the curve of her skull fits into the hollow between Connie’s neck and shoulder. Connie leans her cheek against the crown of Kristen’s head and they wait like that, secure in the knowledge that whatever else happens, their friendship is more important than any dude who comes along.

* * *

Oswald also learns that fúcánglóng are born—or hatched—with a pearl which remains their most treasured possession in their hoard, then uses that knowledge to steal the pearl from Hallie’s mother. Maisie nearly wastes away while Dorian convinces their daughter to negotiate with her ex-boyfriend and return the pearl to whom it belongs. Hallie ends up in an obligatory warehouse at fuck off o’clock in the morning after the nightclub is closed and her shift is over.

“It’s lovely to see you,” Oswald smirks at her with the corners of his mouth turned up like an umbrella rendered useless by windfall. “Did you miss me?” he asks. “I hope so, Halcyon.”

“I didn’t come to see you,” Hallie folds her arms. “I came because you decided slowly killing my mother was a good way to get my attention.”

Oswald shrugs and waddles closer to her until the negative space between their bodies is finite enough to be destroyed with one step. “I stole the pearl from your mother because you left me alone in a hospital with a bullet hole in my thigh and broke my heart in a letter. Which is just insulting,” he gnashes his teeth. As if chewing up the words and spitting them out might change everything.

“Do you have any idea how much it  _sucked_ , seeing you like that?” Hallie whispers in retort, the softness of her voice threaded with steel. “Qǐé, you were bleeding out, but you didn’t notice because you were too busy celebrating your coup! If you want me back, too bad, you can’t have me without my permission. If you want revenge for some perceived slight against the new king of Gotham, I’m right here,” she lifts her skirt and draws her cleaver, “take your best shot.”

Butch and Gabe aim their guns at her. Hallie inhales, feeling the fire and lightning snarl up from her belly, and spits a white hot spark with pinpoint accuracy into the barrel of Gabe’s pistol. It catches the gunpowder and ignites, denting the barrel with a tiny explosion that generates enough force to make him drop his weapon.

“I thought you couldn’t breathe fire!” Oswald yells, more indignant at the possibility that she lied to him than afraid of her.

Hallie shrugs, birdlike, twirling her cleaver in the circle between her thumb and forefingers. “I couldn’t when I told you that, but things have changed.” At that, she puts her cleaver back in its sheath and spews another spark into the muzzle of Butch’s gun.

“ _Enough_.” Oswald snarls, waddling across the room to grab her chin and force her to face him. Hallie shuts her eyes and shakes her head, but he knows how strong she is—she could push him away, pick him up and throw him across the room, but instead her hands are clutching at his jacket and pulling him closer. “Don’t turn away from me,” he clenches his jaw and lowers his voice into something more intimate, “wǒ yě ài nǐ, Halcyon. Miss Crowley said I would have to compromise if I wanted you, but you have to make a compromise too. If you don’t want me hurt, then stand beside me and keep me alive. Give me what I want. Your mind. Your body. Your heart. Your loyalty. Your strength. Your cleaver spilling the blood of my enemies. Your hand in mine,” he covers the back of one hand fisted in his jacket with his palm and presses their foreheads together with a sigh. “Give me everything,” he whispers greedily, using the hand on her chin to tilt her face up and stake his claim on her mouth, kissing a girl who breathes fire without fear of getting burned.

Hallie breaks the kiss, a literal spark passing between their lips as she inhales sharply. “Okay,” she holds up the hand he isn’t squeezing in mock surrender. “Okay, emperor fuckboy.”

Oswald rolls his eyes with his whole head for maximum drama and exhales a disgruntled noise to express his displeasure at the nickname Connie gave him. Hallie smacks him upside the head, quick as a flash of lightning. “What was that for?” Oswald cradles his temple, warmth unfurling in his chest because the blow could’ve been fatal with her strength, but it wasn’t. Which means she gave him a love tap. That, on top of the kiss, is a good sign.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you use me or my family,” Hallie gives him a pointed look, “and then you used my family against me. Not cool, Qǐé.”

Oswald smiles without showing his teeth. “I really did miss you, Halcyon.”

“I’ve been on my feet for twelve hours,” Hallie muffles her yawn in one of her sweater paws, “give me back the goddamn pearl so I can go home and sleep.”

* * *

Leslie invites Connie, Eve, and Torrie to the benefit for the children’s hospital she’s hosting. Luckily she knows enough about the coven to put Torrie and Reggie at another table with Aurelia and Thaddeus. There is a portion of the evening before the entertainment begins for the guests to mingle. That’s how Connie meets Theo. When he kisses her knuckles in a deliberately concocted display of gallantry, she almost vomits on his expensive shoes. Instead she gags and covers her mouth with the palm of her other hand.

“Miss Crowley,” his concerned tone doesn’t match the look in his eyes, “are you all right?”

“Yes.” Connie exhales sharply and disentangles her hand from his. “I’m sorry, Mr. Galavan. I need to sit down.”

“Of course,” he steps back and lets her pass.

Ed looks at Theo over his shoulder before he goes after her.  _What the hell was that?_ Eddie wants to know. Connie sits between them and Eve. Harvey sits on Eve’s other side; to her left, where the haters are. Ed opens his mouth to ask the question, but she holds up one hand to stop him.

“Theo Galavan is a warlock,” Connie says more to Eve than anyone else at the table, “and he’s augmented his power through blood sacrifice. I felt the residue on his hands, viscous and  _gross_. I’m going to take so many showers,” she pauses to chug a flute of champagne and sets the empty glass on the tabletop with a vengeance, “so many.”

Ed cups her face, curling his fingers against the nape of her neck, careful not to disturb her updo. “Does he know you’re…?” he wiggles his nose in homage to Samantha from  _Bewitched_  instead of saying ‘witch’ out loud.

Connie nods and turns her head to kiss his palm before she articulates. “I recognized him, I think. Not as a Crowley, but as being descended from one of the four families.”

“What four families?” Harvey asks.

“Gotham was founded by a Norwegian mercenary in 1635, but it was settled by British colonists, including four families of witches.” Eve squeezes Connie’s knee under the table and takes over the exposition. “There were the Crowleys, the Golds, the Sargents, and the Hamiltons. Every magical bloodline has different quirks. Crowleys are more all-purpose than anything else, Golds typically possess various psionic abilities, Sargents do sorcery, and Hamiltons have fey blood.”

“Except,” chimes in Connie, “we’ve intermingled those bloodlines over almost four centuries in this country. Mr. Galavan could be descended from any of them. Except ours,” she turns and looks at Eve. “Did he feel like family to you?”

Eve shakes her head, one blonde curl dangling from her updo. “I didn’t get close enough for specifics. I can sense his power, but that’s it.”

Connie shrugs, her shoulder hunching to meet her earlobe, and that’s when the bullets start flying. Jerome and Barbara hold the benefit guests hostage to perform a magic act that is mediocre at best despite the threatening overtones. Connie wonders if giving the henchmen simultaneous heart attacks would reveal herself to Theo as a hemomancer, and therefore a potential threat. Eve grabs her hand under the table and shakes her head as Barbara straps Leslie to the spinning wheel. Connie fights every instinct to intervene and protect a member of her coven. Ed pulls her into his arms in a futile attempt to protect Connie herself, holding her like a fulcrum as she buries her face in his neck.

When he kills Jerome, Theo takes power in his death. Connie has never felt death magic, the blackest art, before. Eve watches in morbid fascination while her cousin looks away.

* * *

Hallie is eating dinner with Oswald while he watches Jerome on the news and disapproves of chaos for chaos’ sake. Gabe is doing the crossword puzzle behind the television, nodding like you’re supposed to do when a megalomaniac is ranting in your general vicinity. Oswald swallows a sip of wine and presses his lips together sourly despite the sweetness of it. “Perhaps I could use a new laugh,” he says.

“Or a haircut,” Hallie suggests against the rim of her wineglass. Oswald turns to glare at her over his shoulder for impugning his hairstyle. “What?” she shrugs, birdlike. “Qǐé, your bangs are getting ridiculous.”

Bullock arrives, walking through the door like he owns the mansion Oswald took over after Falcone left the city. “Wow,” he applauds as he approaches the head of the table. “Dude, color me impressed,” he stops clapping, “you know, if I close my eyes, I can still see you holding Fish’s umbrella.” Oswald clenches his jaw and grips the arms of his chair until his knuckles go bloodlessly white. “Yes, Miss Mooney. No, Miss Mooney. Whatever you say, Miss Mooney. That wig looks great on you, Miss Mooney. Seriously,” he sits on the tabletop and reaches for the wineglass in front of Oswald, “the worm has turned.” Hallie waves to Bullock after he recognizes her from the diner. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asks.

“I’m with him.” Hallie shrugs again, hunching both shoulders to meet the hinges of her jaw. “I have no idea why.”

“Detective Bullock,” Oswald puffs his chest out and his voice gets louder the way it does whenever he doesn’t want to show weakness. “I heard you rejoined the force,” he nods so forcefully he bounces in his chair a bit. It takes everything in Hallie not to flinch when Oswald lifts his hand and slaps his palm against the armrest, old habits from when Darius was beating her dying a slow death even now. “I’m so happy, but aren’t you missing all the excitement?” At that, he points to the door. As if to say,  _get the hell out_.

“Yeah.” Bullock doesn’t take the hint. “I got the word too late. Besides, I want to talk to you.”

“Of course.” Oswald leans back in his chair, trying to project the regal presence of a king on his throne and not quite pulling it off. “Always happy to help.”

Bullock leans forward, the motion a threat wrapped in a pretense of nonchalance. “See, there’s talk on the street that Jim Gordon did a favor for you, collected a debt, and the guy ended up dead.”

Oswald exhales a wheezy little chuckle, his head shaking with laughter. “Rumors,” he bites his lower lip and flails a hand to wave the accusation off, “psh.”

“Rumors.” Bullock laughs more at him than with him, a thread of incredulity creeping into the sound.

 _How do men ever get anything done, if vaguely ominous small talk is all they do?_ Hallie wonders.  _I thought being in the mafia was going to be violent and bloody, not feeding lobster tails to Kitty’s tabby underneath the table and listening to my boyfriend put on airs. I wonder if Connie would let me take her home_ , she smiles when the kitten tries and fails to climb her leggings,  _or would her familiar eat a kitten?_

“Well, then again…” Oswald grins, pulling off sinister where he couldn’t muster regality before. “Where there’s smoke…” he flails again to wave the implications away. “Jim shouldn’t worry about that,” his assures Bullock with a hint of pride, “he and I are  _good_  friends.”

“See, that’s the problem, Oswald.” Bullock informs him. “I think he is worried, because something happened today, and you were the obvious person to come to, and I sensed Jim was a little reluctant to come down here.”

Oswald’s smile thins, his voice losing all pomposity as it sharpens like the switchblade he keeps in the lining of his jacket. “Like I said,” he loosens his grip on the armrest, “he shouldn’t worry.”

“As long as you two remain friends,” Bullock lifts the wineglass.

“Exactly.” Oswald nods, his head bobbing with false enthusiasm.

Bullock toasts him with disdain and drinks before he puts the glass down empty, thudding against the heavy wood of the table. “I got half a mind to take you outside and beat you senseless with a garbage can,” he growls.

Gabe draws his gun. Hallie unsheathes her cleaver under the table. Oswald smirks, the corners of his mouth unfurling as Gabe clicks the safety off.

“Maybe some other time.” Bullock makes a disgruntled noise.

Oswald responds with a nod that might as well be a nonverbal  _bitch, please_  before his nose wrinkles in a way Hallie really shouldn’t consider adorable.

Bullock gets off the table and turns on his heels to face Oswald again instead of walking away. “Call yourself whatever you want,” he gesticulates with one arm out and fingers splayed in the air, “the king of Gotham, but to me you’ll always be that little umbrella boy. And if you come after Jim Gordon, you gotta come after me.” Bullock gestures to himself slowly and deliberately. “And I still owe you for Fish.” Oswald gnashes his teeth, his knuckles clenched white again. “Seriously,” Bullock says, “this place is amazing.” With that, he blows the self-proclaimed king of the city a kiss of death with both hands and walks away without looking back.

Oswald throws his wineglass against the wall in a fit of impotent rage. “Get me another drink!” he orders Gabe after it shatters.

Hallie rolls her eyes at him so hard she actually kinks her neck, clenching her teeth and inhaling with a sharp hiss at the twinge that ensues.

One of the goons, a leather clad man with an eyepatch whose name Hallie doesn’t know, steps forward. “I can work that out for you,” he offers.

“Don’t you dare,” Oswald snarls, “no one touches Halcyon but me.”

“Okay,” Hallie sighs. “I think what you meant to say was: no one touches Hallie without her permission, because she is not a thing I own, but a person who has chosen to be here and won’t hesitate to change her mind if her boyfriend starts pulling that ‘Sookie is mine!’ nonsense again. Spoiler alert! Sookie Stackhouse dumps Bill Compton in the books and on the show for a Viking who is taller and better at sex.”

“How bogus was the last season?” the goon with the eyepatch inquires.

“Mindbogglingly bogus,” Hallie nods her approval. “It was so bad. It totally jumped the shark after season four, in my opinion.”

Oswald glowers at them while Gabe pours him another glass of wine.

Hallie works the kink out of her neck herself and pops her topmost vertebra. “I’m going upstairs,” she informs him. “Are you coming?”

Oswald drinks his wine and follows her, lightheaded, into the master bedroom. “Why does it bother you when I say you’re mine?” he asks.

“Because you don’t get to own me,” Hallie sighs and sits on the foot of the king size bed. “That’s not how this works. If you want someone who only speaks when spoken to, or takes orders without question, or yields when you shriek like a harpy, or kneels to you like a peasant before a king, then you picked the wrong girl. I can be with you on my own terms or not at all. It’s your choice, Qǐé.”

“What are your terms?” Oswald unpins his tie and leaves it on the dresser along with his cufflinks, shucking off his jacket and waddling to close the distance between them. Then he sits beside her on the edge of the mattress and lifts her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles and gently biting the fleshy part of her palm before he moves his mouth to the scales on the inside of her wrist.

“I’m not quitting my day job.” Hallie gnaws on the inside of her cheek as he kisses along her forearm to the crook of her elbow.  _Who does he think he is, Gomez Addams?_ she wonders.  _I doubt he could grow the moustache_. “I like the diner, and my coworkers, and my regulars. I don’t want to stop waitressing.”

“I don’t like it.” Oswald nips the curve of her shoulder.

Hallie digs her fingers into his knee through his pants when he kisses her neck. “I don’t care,” she retorts. “I do what I want or this goes the way of the dinosaurs. I’m talking asteroid hitting the earth levels of annihilation—”

Oswald curls his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck, his fingertips caressing the scales there as he slants their mouths together. Hallie holds onto the lapels of his waistcoat and gives as good as she gets, kissing him raw and hungry, tugging his bottom lip between her teeth. Oswald breaks the kiss to yank her dress over her head, only to find her wearing a thermal shirt and leggings underneath. Hallie kicks her boots off while he catches his breath, using her toes to roll her legwarmers down.

“I have other stipulations,” she informs him hoarsely as she moves to unbutton his waistcoat.

“What are they?” Oswald asks, untucking her shirt from her leggings and scooping his fingers underneath to feel the cool flesh of her waist.

“Will you please call me Hallie?” she gives him a shy grin he has never seen before that makes his heart clench horribly in his chest. “It’s weird to be called Halcyon by anyone who isn’t my mother.”

“Only if you call me by my name,” Oswald kicks off his own shoes, “not  _chi ugh_  or emperor fuckboy.”

Hallie giggles at the way his whole face pinches around the word  _fuckboy_. “Okay,” she lets him take her thermal off before he sheds his waistcoat along with his own shirt. “Oswald.”

“Hallie.” Oswald smiles without the malice that often lurks in the corners of his lips. “I like the sound of you saying my name.”

When he kisses her again it’s soft, sweet, slow. Hallie knows what to do with the frenzy that comes with wanting your hands all over someone, but tenderness is new to her. It’s also not at all what she expected from Oswald, especially since he was attracted to her at first because she held the blade of her cleaver to his throat.

 _I can’t believe that was only a year ago_ , she thinks, moaning softly as he scrapes his teeth over the pulse in her neck and tangles his fingers in her hair, cupping the back of her skull with his palm. Hallie maps the lean planes of muscle under the skin of his back and bites his earlobe, not quite hard enough to break the skin, but close enough to test a theory.

Oswald buries his moan in the hollow of her throat before he untangles his fingers from her hair, using both hands to unhook her bra and throw it across the room.

Hallie watches the trajectory of her bra until it lands on an ornate candelabra. Luckily the candles aren’t lit, or it would be getting hot in here in the worst way. “You are such a drama queen,” she huffs.

“You  _bit_  me.” Oswald smirks with relish as he looks down at her naked breasts. “Allow me to return the favor.” With that, he lifts her left breast and sucks her nipple into his mouth, flicking the hard nub with his tongue while he sinks his teeth into the flesh around her areola. Hallie squeaks because how good it feels startles her, the sensation of him sucking and biting and licking all at once almost too much stimulation. Oswald cups her other breast and twists her nipple between his thumb and forefingers, his smooth pale hand a stark contrast to her freckly dark skin. Hallie grabs his shoulders, her nails raising bright red welts along his biceps while he moves his mouth to her other breast. Oswald maps the curves from her ribcage to her hipbone before he slips one hand past the waistband of her leggings, groaning at how wet she is for him. “You liked that,” he deduces, his breathing ragged as he fondles the soaked crotch of her panties.

“Yeah,” Hallie rasps, “is your offer to go down on me still good?”

Oswald rubs her clit through her panties to make her squirm. “Only if you sit on my face.”

“Okay.” Hallie slides off the bed to unbuckle the straps of the sheath on her thigh before she pulls her leggings and panties down. Oswald hums in appreciation as she bends over. Hallie turns and puts herself between his knees, unbuttoning his pants and unzipping his fly to reveal the white cotton briefs he has on underneath. Oswald clenches his jaw while she takes his pants off, his mouth gaping open a bit as he watches her crawl up his body until her knees are on either side of his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever done this without the other person being tied up,” Hallie informs him as she tucks her ankles under his shoulders, “and I always sat facing the other way.”

Oswald grabs her by the hips and pulls her down to gently bite at the mound of her cunt before he buries his face in her, spreading her open to suck on her folds and fuck her with his tongue while his nose bumps her clit.

Hallie closes her mouth to muffle a totally undignified squeal and flops onto her elbows as her hips grind down on his face. Oswald makes a smug humming sound low in his throat and it goes straight through her, curling her toes and drawing out another high noise. Hallie eventually comes so hard she loses awareness of herself for a little bit as everything narrows down to the pleasure warming her whole coldblooded body.

Oswald lifts her hips to get himself out from under her, licking the taste of her from his lips and shucking his underwear before he procures a condom packet from the box Hallie told him to buy and tears the foil open with his teeth. “Hallie,” he exhales her name in a breathless voice. “Do you want me to take you like that with your ass in the air?”

Hallie turns and looks at him over her shoulder. “Do you have another position in mind, Oswald?” she asks in the sort of heaving bosom tone she thought only existed in the pages of harlequin romance novels.

“So you will kneel to me.” Oswald smirks at her while he rolls the condom on, his chin slick with the evidence of her arousal still. “If I make you come first.”

“Okay,” Hallie retorts as he positions himself behind her. “If you make a mockery of my terms ever again, I’m getting out my vibrator and you can watch me fuck myself like you wanted, with the stipulation that you have to sit fully dressed in that chair over there and keep your hands behind your head the whole time. I will leave you wanting, and nothing you do to yourself in the aftermath will be as good as it would be with me. Got it?”

Oswald strokes down the line of scales along her spinal cord, his fingertips a gilded pressure from the nape of her neck to the cleft of her ass. “Not tonight,” he wraps one arm tight around her waist and spreads her open with his fingers before he rubs his cock between her legs without sliding inside her just yet, “tonight all I want is you.”

Hallie nods her consent as he licks the hollow between her shoulder blades and says, “Okay.” When he slips into her, Oswald goes maddeningly slow at first and it pisses Hallie off because it feels like he’s totally unaffected by the sensation of him inside her. “I’m not—” she moans softly with a thread of frustration, “I’m not fragile.”

“I know.” Oswald drags the rough pad of his thumb over an ugly old slub of scar tissue on the underside of her upper arm, holding her with his whole body while he moves within her. “I’m not doing it this way to be gentle with you. I want to hear you beg for more.”

Hallie scoffs. “I don’t beg.”

“Maybe not until now,” Oswald retorts, “but tonight you will.”

Hallie rolls her eyes, but then he pinches her clit between his thumb and forefinger, provoking another completely undignified squeal. Oswald slips out of her while her hips buck under him and thrusts back in hard enough to make her come again from his fingers between her legs and his cock working her open, her orgasm rolling through her like a thunderclap.  _I hereby vow to never tell him that he has more girth than my vibrator_ , she thinks. _I am not feeding that information to his monstrous ego_.

Later, when they’ve used three condoms and started on round four, Hallie does beg a little bit. Oswald settles on top of her to kiss her mouth and skim his tongue along the seam of her lips. Hallie curls one hand into his hair and wraps her legs around him, the scales behind her knees cool against the skin of his waist. Oswald takes her other hand in his, interlacing their fingers while he buries himself in her to the hilt. Hallie moans into his mouth and tugs his bottom lip between her teeth. Oswald gasps her name and slips his other hand between them, digging his fingers into the crease of her thigh hard enough to bruise and moving his thumb in rough circles over her clit. Hallie sinks her teeth into his neck in the heat of her orgasm. Oswald comes with a sharp, desperate moan after she untangles the hand in his hair and experimentally slides her fingertip into his asshole. That has possibilities she plans to explore later, maybe by using her vibrator on him instead of herself. If he’s cool with that. Oswald eventually disentangles himself from her to throw away the used condom. Hallie flops onto her stomach and conks out before he waddles back to bed, so she doesn’t feel him take her hand and kiss her knuckles again before he snuggles close to keep her warm.

Hallie wakes up to the telltale thud of a body hitting the floor. Gertrud Kapelput remains a prone crone while she groans internally. Hallie pokes her boyfriend in the shoulder, careful to avoid the persistent welts she left on his arms. “Oswald,” she whispers, “your mother is here.”

Oswald bolts upright. “What?” his inside voice becomes his outside voice when he notices where his mother is, exactly. “What happened? Why is she on the floor?”

“I think she fainted.” Hallie yawns, lifting her hands over her head and intertwining her fingers to pop the joints in her wrists and shoulders.

“I don’t appreciate you distracting me,” Oswald snaps.

Hallie rolls her eyes at him, popping the joints in her neck as she does so. “It’s not my fault you like my boobs so much you decided to stare at them instead of fetching the smelling salts for your mom.”

Oswald gets out of bed so fast he almost trips over his own feet, wobbling into his pants and waddling to the ensuite. Hallie gets dressed faster than she ever has in her life. “I’m going home!” she hollers as she straps her cleaver in its sheath under her skirt and over her leggings. “Have fun explaining this to her when she wakes up, emperor fuckboy!”

“Don’t you dare leave me here alone!” Oswald shouts as he waddles to glower at her from the entrance to the ensuite.

“Not my mother,” Hallie retorts. “Not my problem. So long and thanks for all the sex!” With that, she blows this popsicle stand and makes  _whoop-whoop-whoop_  noises in homage to Dr. Zoidberg from  _Futurama_ as she flails down the hallway, stopping only to scoop up the orange tabby kitten on her way out.

* * *

February thirteenth is Galentine’s Day. Connie, Eve, Hallie, and Kristen have celebrated it together since Eve returned from her lost years at Yale. These festivities often bled through into the next day because February fourteenth is Hallie’s birthday. Kristen is dating someone new again, so for the first time in the history of their collective friendships no one in their circle is single.

Connie was always the outlier. Honestly, most of her Valentine’s Days were spent eating Lindt truffles she bought for herself. When they were in high school, she invited Ed over to marathon horror movies and surreptitiously pressed her thigh against his to see if he would do something about it, but he never did. When they were in undergrad, Ed got sexiled from his dorm room every year without exception. When they were in grad school, Connie spent her Valentine’s Days alone. Ed called her every day while he was gone, but it wasn’t the same for either of them.

Hallie was single for three years, keeping her friend company in no man’s—or woman’s—land. When she brings the kitten home to Newgrange, it goes better than she expected. Connie returns from the library at four in the afternoon. By a minute past four, she’s cuddling the kitten to her chest and ignoring the dander sticking to her cardigan.

“Did you know,” Connie tucks the kitten under her chin, “that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word ‘tabby’ denoted any female cat belonging to a witch?”

“So can we keep her?” Hallie asks hopefully. “I don’t want to leave her in a house full of mobsters. I’m worried she’s going to get stepped on because she’s so little.”

“What’s your name?” Connie asks. It takes Hallie a second to realize her best friend is talking to the kitten instead of her. “Cinderella,” she cackles, “because you’re the color of a pumpkin, like her carriage. Awesome.”

 _Of course the kitten likes her better_ , Hallie thinks,  _cats and witches are natural allies. I should’ve known_. “Traitor,” she folds her arms in mock disgruntlement.

“I made tiramisu mooncakes for your Galentine’s Day gift,” Connie informs her. “I know they’re supposed to be an autumnal thing, but...” she shrugs.

Hallie flails into the kitchen and resists the urge to shove a whole flower-shaped cake in her mouth, taking a dainty bite instead and moaning at the foodgasm that ensues. “Rude,” she groans indignantly because traditional Chinese pastries made by a white girl should not taste so good.  _I think my lăolao makes better ones_ , she thinks,  _but only because she’s been doing it for thousands of years_.

Hallie is eating her third mooncake when her phone buzzes. “Are you calling to break up with me because your mom told you to?” she asks, only halfway joking.

Oswald shakes his head before he remembers she can’t see him. “I’m calling to warn you.”

“Why?” Hallie stretches the vowel sound out suspiciously.

“Well,” Oswald huffs, “my mother assumed you were living with me because you slept over and she threatened to wait at the mansion for you to return. I told her you moved out to live at Newgrange with Miss Crowley, and she decided to celebrate Galentine’s Day with you after I explained your plans for tonight.”

Hallie gapes, at a total loss for words.

“Hallie,” Connie yells from the sitting room. “Why is your boyfriend’s henchman escorting his mother over my bridge?”

“Whatever you have planned for Valentine’s Day had better make up for this,” Hallie hisses. “It’s also my birthday. I expect you to pull out all the stops and give me so many orgasms that I have to call in sick to work because I won’t be able to walk the next day. Got it?”

“Only if you promise not to gut my mother like a fish,” Oswald stipulates, the smugness tucked into the corners of his grin audible in his voice.

“I make no such promises,” Hallie retorts before she hangs up on him.

Connie is laying on the couch with the kitten asleep in her cleavage. “I have to get up and ruin the cute overload to lead her here, don’t I?”

“I’m sorry,” Hallie sighs, “she walked in on us this morning and fainted because her son totally got the melodrama gene from his mom. I don’t know what she’s doing here, unless she wants to scratch my eyes out because she thinks I deflowered her little boy.”

“I think her issues with you are more hifalutin than prudish,” Connie says, “her main objection to Penguin dating is that no girl is good enough for a Cobblepot.”

 _Oh_ , Hallie thinks.  _Oh no_. “Except you,” she blurts as comprehension dawns bright and harsh like a sparkling diamond.

“What,” Connie deadpans.

“You’re a Crowley,” Hallie explains. “You’re a blueblood. You’re a good match.”

“Nope!” Connie yelps loudly enough to wake up Cinderella, who licks her chin before she falls back to sleep. “No offense, but I wouldn’t date Penguin if he were the last viable male specimen on earth.”

Hallie shrugs, birdlike. “No offense taken.” After all, she has no idea what Connie sees in Ed. Hell, she has no idea what she herself sees in Oswald.  _Love makes you do the wacky_ , she thinks, scooping up the dozing kitten.

Connie makes a mournful noise in protest before she unfolds herself from the couch, shucks her cardigan, and shakes the dander away. Hallie blinks as the cat fur on her clothes and couch vanishes into thin air, probably destined to inhabit the garbage bag under the sink. Connie swore every witch in Gotham to her a few weeks ago. Even the small magic she casts feels heavier now.

Eve arrives next, followed by Kristen. Gertrud bemoans Eve’s marital status and unsubtly attempts talking her son up to Connie, who copes by getting her so drunk on pink champagne she passes out atop the antique swooning couch in the sitting room while they watch  _Sugar and Spice_. Cinderella eventually crawls into her lap, shedding orange fur all over the fabric of her vintage dress.

“Does being the Penguin’s girlfriend make you queen of Gotham?” Kristen asks, her strawberry blonde tresses loose and falling in soft waves over her shoulders.

Hallie shakes her head so fast her auburn hair bounces around her face. “Hell no.”

* * *

Eve wheedles Harvey into taking Ed out of the manor for the night. Connie talks Ed into going because he needs male friends. Ed insists he has male friends. Connie unintentionally bursts his bubble when she makes the compelling argument that none of his male coworkers hang out with him outside of their workplace. Kristen—the only female coworker he considers his friend—doesn’t hang out with him unless Connie and Hallie are there too.

Harvey picks Ed up and they end up hanging out at the arcade. Ed learns, to his delight, that Harvey is the reigning Skeeball champion.

“I used to come here with my twin brother,” Harvey confides in him over pizza, “his name was Murray.”

Ed responds with a grin after he finishes his slice. “Did you know the best way to drug someone is to stick the needle under their fingernails, because nobody checks for puncture marks there?”

Harvey flips his two-headed coin.  _Heads_ , he thinks,  _he put his father in a vegetative state on purpose. Tails, he didn’t_. “Did you know I kissed Connie once?” he says out loud as he catches the coin in his palm and closes his fingers over it.

Ed’s eyes narrow as his lips flatten into a thin, menacing line.  _And then he ran into my knife_ , Eddie thinks,  _he ran into my knife ten times_.

“Eve set us up on a blind date,” Harvey elaborates, “and Connie bit my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood when she kissed me.”

Ed stops mentally riddling his corpse full of stab wounds. If she kissed him to taste his blood, then Connie was gathering information through hemomancy, not kissing Harvey as an end in itself.

“I knew Eve was spying on us when thunder struck outside.” Harvey chuckles fondly. “Connie shooed her into the booth with me and we had our first date then and there. Eve told me what happened that night with Vincenzo Gigante after I told her that I sat in on the trial when I was in college because I was the crime reporter for the  _Gotham University Gazette_. That’s why I wound up majoring in pre-law instead of journalism. Eve still blames herself for what happened to Connie. That’s why I helped with her plan to get at Vincenzo without breaking the blood oath she made.”

“I wish I would have killed him that night,” Ed blurts.

Harvey cocks his head curiously. “Why didn’t you?”

Ed shrugs. “Connie asked me not to.”

* * *

Oswald is waiting on the bridge to pick up his mother when Ed and Harvey return to Newgrange later that night. Ed rolls down the passenger side window to wave hello. It takes Oswald a moment to recognize him from the precinct. “What are you doing here?” he snaps, remembering how Ed poked fun at him by asking  _Did you know male emperor penguins keep their eggs warm by balancing them on their feet? Isn’t that neat?_

Ed grins at him. “Did you know Hallie was nicknamed Lark in high school, not only because her surname is Larkin, but also because of her singing voice?”

Oswald glowers with tumescence as his feathers ruffle, but when Harvey offers him a ride, he folds himself into the backseat. Harvey is a member of the clan now, bound with blood and magic, so the spell on the land allows them to cross the bridge and enter the manor.

Newgrange is three stories tall, four including the attic. It wasn’t originally built with electricity or modern plumbing. Flowering moss with tiny white blooms creeps over the corners of the smooth cobblestones of the path between the mouth of the woods and the staircase to the front door, while a thinner path branches out to the back entrance. Ivy clings to the rain gutters in an uneasy coexistence with morning glories. Frogs croak from the depths of a fountain, perched on lilypads next to white and pink water lilies. Toads lurk under the water like fat animate pickles, peering at the men through eerie yellow eyes. Connie’s familiar, a lesser demon she bound in the form of a freakishly huge raven, perches on the iron gateway and swoops down to caw at them before she flies off into the night. Oswald narrowly avoids stepping on a salamander when he emerges from the car, its tail catching fire dangerously close to his toe.

Harvey is family, but Ed has a key. Oswald waddles into the foyer and stares up at the chandelier hanging overhead. Harvey follows Ed into the parlor while he removes his shoes and leaves them alongside the other pairs by the front door.

Eve is curled up in an overstuffed armchair, wearing a giant logo t-shirt that belonged to Connie once tucked into a pair of white boxer shorts festooned with red hearts; her blonde curls are up in a messy bun, her face is bare, her freckles are visible, her eyelashes are pale without mascara, and the bags underneath her eyes are designer. Hallie is perched on the arm of her chair in a multicolored chenille sweater Kristen made for her and black leggings patterned with toxic waste symbols, her fingernails and toenails painted a matching shade of noxious yellow. Kristen is sitting on the floor in front of the couch wearing the Gotham University sweatshirt that she bought during their freshman year, plaid flannel pajama bottoms in soft pastels, and fuzzy slippers made to look like giraffes. Connie is doing pin curls for Kristen from the couch, holding a few hairpins between her teeth so they protrude from one corner of her mouth. Gertrud is still passed out on the swooning couch, but Cinderella has scampered off elsewhere, probably out the cat door in the kitchen.

Harvey perches on the unoccupied arm of the overstuffed armchair to kiss Eve hello. Ed leans over the back of the couch to hug Connie, wrapping his arms loosely around her shoulders and nuzzling her neck. Connie makes a noise that sounds like  _eep_ , but she covers the back of his hand with her palm and gently squeezes his fingers.

“Qǐé?” Hallie notices Oswald standing there.

Oswald waddles to Gertrud and glowers at Connie. “What did you do to my mother, you witch?” he yowls, one hand sliding into his jacket to draw his switchblade.

Hallie rolls her eyes. “Rude,” she huffs. “Not cool, Qǐé.”

Connie resists the urge to steal the sound from his voice box. “I dosed her with melatonin, an all-natural supplement that helps people sleep. When mixed with alcohol, it put her out like a snuffed candle. Think hard before you draw the knife hidden in your pocket, emperor fuckboy. This is my house. Attacking me here isn’t a smart move.”

Eve gives Harvey a significant look. “I cannot believe you brought the Penguin here,” she grumbles.

Harvey shrugs and smiles at her. “I didn’t see a sign telling me there were no kingpins allowed.”

Oswald smirks because Eve used ‘the’ as a precursor to his name. “Thank you,” he says, “nobody else here in this room seems to remember that it’s Penguin. Not  _chi ugh_. Or emperor fuckboy.”

“Oh,” Kristen looks at Hallie with sympathy woven into the line of her lips, “his Mandarin is abysmal.”

“I know,” Hallie sighs, “I’m dating the whitest of white boys. Dishonor on me. Dishonor on my cow. Dishonor on my whole family. At least my lăolao didn’t roast him alive when he crashed Thanksgiving dinner.”

Hallie carries Gertrud out to the car waiting on the other side of the bridge soon after that, with Oswald waddling beside her while she matches her pace to his. “Hi, Gabe.” Hallie tosses a wax paper bag into his lap. “I brought you some tiramisu mooncakes because Qǐé made you wait out here.”

“How’s Cindy?” Gabe asks.

 _So the mystery of who fed the cat has been solved_ , Hallie thinks. “Good,” she opens the backdoor and gently lays Gertrud down in the backseat, “cats love Connie.”

Oswald exhales a rueful laugh as she buckles his mother in. “Of course.”

Hallie closes the backdoor and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. Oswald grabs her wrist to keep her from walking away, pulling her into a kiss so hard and so thorough it makes her toes curl inside the confines of her tattered black Converse high-tops. Hallie nuzzles his nose with hers before she takes back her wrist and walks away. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she calls over her shoulder. “Goodnight, emperor fuckboy.”

Oswald is grateful for the cover of darkness concealing his flushed cheeks. “Goodnight, my Lark.”

* * *

Ed designs a scavenger hunt for Connie as her Valentine’s Day gift. There are thirteen clues hidden all over the Old Gotham library where she works: twelve leading to small tokens of his affections, and a single clue leading back to Newgrange. Connie solves his riddles and returns home to find him standing in the kitchen by the island with a bouquet of gerbera daisies—her favorite, a green tinted variety called Hulk.

Ed grins at her while he feasts his eyes on her dress. Upon closer inspection the black fabric is patterned with roses that add texture to it, and the scalloped lace trim of her bra is peeking out from beneath the sweetheart neckline. It takes him a moment to realize she has sheer off-white stockings on instead of her standard issue black. Connie smiles shyly at him and takes the bouquet, setting it on the countertop before she closes the distance between them.

“Hello, Connie.” Ed presses his palms into the curves of her waist as she rises to meet him on tiptoe and he tastes her dark red lipstick when they kiss.

 _Yum_ , Eddie thinks.

“Sorry,” Connie smiles with a total lack of remorse and carefully wipes away the smudges of her lipstick from his face. Ed sits on the stool across from her while she uses her compact to take her lipstick off; without it, her mouth is a dark shade of pink because she bites her lips so often. “You cooked,” she tilts her head owlishly. “You’ve never cooked for me before.”

“I learned to cook while I was in Seattle,” Ed informs her. “I like to cook, but your food is better than mine, especially your desserts, so I made crème brûlée. Which, to my knowledge, you’ve never made.”

“Nope,” Connie shakes her head slowly. “Where did you get the butane torch?”

“Work.” Ed frowns when he remembers how Kristen fled after he tried wishing her a happy Valentine’s Day. “Miss Kringle has been avoiding me,” he frowns, “did I do something to upset her?”

“No.” Connie says, the pale skin between her dark eyebrows furrowing.

 _What’s up with her?_  Eddie asks,  _her eyebrows have been doing that all week_.

“What’s wrong?” Ed wants to know, “your eyebrows are doing a thing.”

“Kristen has a crush on you,” Connie blurts.

Ed gapes, his eyes going wide, his whole face descending into gobsmacked territory.

 _This is why Connie isn’t having sex with us_ , Eddie deduces,  _she’s scared of you breaking up with her_.

 _Oh dear_ , Ed thinks. “What breaks and never falls?” he blurts. “What falls but never breaks?”

“Daybreak,” Connie answers with a sigh. “Nightfall.”

“Correct.” Ed grins at her. “Miss Kringle having a crush on me doesn’t change what I want, you know.”

“Sorry,” Connie huffs, “but you only realized you wanted me after I told you how I feel. It’s not a stretch to assume you might want Kristen again now that you know she likes you back.”

Ed laughs out loud and covers his mouth to stifle the noise, his shoulders quivering with it. Connie exhales a soft, indignant little squeak. “Connie,” he murmurs. “I had this version of Miss Kringle in my head. I kept expecting her to react like you instead of herself. It’s perfectly logical,” he grins at her, “you’re my favorite. I love you. I can’t go back to liking Miss Kringle, not after having you.”

Connie tugs her bottom lip between her teeth and bites down in a doomed attempt to stop herself from crying. “Welp,” she resigns herself to ruining her mascara with a sniffle, “I love you back.”

“Why do you always say ‘back’ instead of ‘too’?” Ed asks, his tone curious.

“Eve and I used to say, ‘I love you backwards and forwards and every which way.’” Connie explains. “It’s a homophonic pun, which and witch. Very clever when you’re six,” she hunches one shoulder to meet her earlobe in a shrug. “It got shortened over the years, I guess. Eve does the same thing, saying ‘back’ instead of ‘too.’”

Ed takes her hand across the table, stroking his thumb over her knuckles. “Is Miss Kringle liking me the reason we aren’t having sex anymore?”

“Oh!” Connie blushes. “No, actually. I’m on the pill, but I still get four periods a year. That’s the reason we haven’t had sex all week. It was shark week. I’m a hemomancer, but I’m not a fan of period sex. Are you?”

Ed shakes his head slowly, his objections to period sex coming from twelve years of being around girls whose cycles were synced up so they menstruated at the same time and what changed about them during shark week. Eve gets a shorter fuse, her bullshit tolerance level dropping below zero. Hallie watches Disney movies that never fail to make her bawl. Connie gets terrible headaches and curls up in bed all day, unless she has to work. “Are you menstruating now?” he wants to know.

“Nope,” Connie pops the  _p_  sound. “I’m wearing all white lingerie. I wouldn’t have done that if I were still bleeding.”

Ed swallows thickly as his cock twitches in his pants.  _Oh dear_ , he thinks.

 _I want to lick her pussy through her pretty white panties_ , Eddie thinks back.

 _Not tonight_ , Ed retorts.  _It’s our first Valentine’s Day as a couple. Connie is mine tonight. All mine. Not yours_.

 _Dude_ , Eddie thinks,  _we’re the same person. Connie likes me the same way that she likes you_.

 _False_ , Ed thinks back,  _she loved me for over a decade while she didn’t know you existed. All you are is a mind within my unconscious mind. There is no you without me_.

“Ed?” Connie tilts her head owlishly. “Planet Earth to Edward Nygma.”

“Do you want me tonight?” Ed asks, “or Eddie?”

“I want you.” Connie gives him a smile with shyness tucked into the corners. “It’s our first Valentine’s Day together. I wore the white lingerie because you said I reminded you of Snow White before we met. I love you backwards and forwards and every which way, and that includes Eddie, but you’re my best friend and tonight is our night. I want you,” she blushes again, “badly.”

Ed grins smug and goofy all at once.

After dinner, Ed insists on loading the dishwasher, the other cleanup done before she arrived. When he finds her in the library Connie is in her stocking feet, her Oxford heels kicked off somewhere, probably her walk-in bedroom closet; her mascara and eyeliner are gone, her thumbnails bitten to the quick.

Connie tucks one askew curl behind her ear as he comes to a halt before her. “I didn’t know if you wanted to undress me,” she exhales a soft, nervous giggle and flails one hand at herself. “Sorry, but can we go slowly tonight? I’m super anxious for some reason.”

Ed nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I can go slowly,” he promises as he puts one hand on her neck and strokes his thumb along the line of her jaw.

“Awesome.” Connie smooths her hands from his waist up his shirtfront to undo his tie. Ed removes the clip from her hair with his other hand and hunches to give her a lingering kiss while she unbuttons his shirt, wrapping his arm tight around her waist once he shucks his shirt off, consciously avoiding the zipper up the back of her dress. Connie fondles his collarbones and clavicles, his thin shoulders, the facets of his back and chest, stroking his nipples with her fingertips through his undershirt.

Ed moans into her mouth and moves one hand under her skirt to grab her rear, curling his fingers into the soft flesh through her panties. Connie whimpers as the hard length of his cock rubs against her flabby stomach through layers of their clothing. Ed breaks the kiss and presses their foreheads together, fogging up her glasses and his own while he catches his breath.

“Connie,” Ed pants her name. “I promise to go slowly, but I still want you.”

“Take off your pants,” Connie retorts in a breathless whisper as she unbuckles his belt and undoes the button on his slacks.

Ed removes his hand from under her skirt reluctantly to drop his slacks and kick them off so he’s left in his undershirt, briefs, and socks. Connie tugs her lower lip between her teeth and that alone is enough to make his cock harder. Ed unzips her dress and pulls it down so the black fabric puddles on the floor, then steps back to look at her.

Connie is wearing a pair of off-white satin panties trimmed with scalloped lace and a bra that matches, the outline of her pink areolae and the coarse dark curls between her legs visible through the material, her stockings held up by a garter belt with thin straps attached to triangles of lace edged in silk ribbon.

Ed grins at her for the umpteenth time, wide and manic around the edges. Connie lets him gently push her toward the bed until she flops onto the mattress, bouncing a bit as he crawls on top of her. Ed stops grinning to drag his tongue over her left nipple, licking it through her bra and sucking the hard nub into the heat of his mouth through the fabric while he rubs her other nipple between his thumb and forefingers.

“ _Oh_ ,” Connie moans softly and curls her fingers into his hair. “Oh, Ed.”

Ed gently bites the swell of each breast above the satin cups of her bra, not hard enough to leave a mark, but just enough pressure to make her moan his name again. Connie whimpers when he experimentally crooks one finger over the crotch of her panties. Ed uses his mouth on her breasts and rubs her cunt teasingly slow until the flimsy satin material is soaked, his fingertips slick with the evidence of her arousal. Connie makes a shrill noise in protest after he stops moving his fingers. Ed nuzzles her neck, his murmur of laughter ghosting over her skin. Connie flicks her tongue over the shell of his ear and smiles when he groans into the hollow of her throat. Ed takes his glasses off and banishes them to her nightstand before he kisses his way down her body, swirling his tongue into her navel, nipping at her belly, and finally licking her cunt through her panties while he intertwines the fingers of his other hand with hers, pressing their palms together.

Connie yelps when the very tip of his tongue brushes her clit on the upstroke, her hips lurching desperately. Ed sucks on the crotch of her underwear, tasting her arousal in the soaking wet satin before he tugs her panties down her thighs and slips two fingers into her knuckle deep. Connie whines as he crooks his fingers inside her, rubbing her g-spot while he creeps the flat of his tongue over her clit. Ed sucks on her clit until she comes, muffling her scream with the heel of her other hand. Connie whimpers as he slips his fingers out of her while she clenches around them, her cunt aching for more of him inside her.

Ed licks her slick from his fingers with obscene wet noises. “Yum.”

Connie squirms onto her side and buries her face in her pillow. Ed stops holding her hand and crawls back up her body to nuzzle her neck again, then kisses the hollow underneath the hinge of her jaw while he gently takes off her glasses. Connie turns to look at him over her shoulder when he unhooks her bra. “I want you so badly,” she whispers.

Ed grins into it when he kisses her lips, tangling one hand in her dark curls and using his other hand to stroke the head of his cock between her folds. “I want you,” he whispers back as he thrusts inside her as slowly as possible, “backwards and forwards and every which way.”

Connie makes him last until they change positions. When she rolls them over and pins him under her, he escalates by turning her around and thrusting up into her as deep as he can from behind, the underside of his cock rubbing against her g-spot so deliciously hard. It’s enough to make her lose control of the casting after he puts his hand between her legs and strokes her clit through his shallow thrusts. Connie muffles another screaming orgasm in the hollow of her palm. Ed flops onto his side after he slips out of her, cuddling her into his arms with her back against his chest as their legs intertwine from a new angle. Connie wiggles her fingers to banish his semen into the toilet so it won’t stain the sheets. “I love you,” she whispers.

Ed buries his face in her hair to inhale the scent of her pomegranate shampoo mingled with the smells of sweat and their sex. “I love you back.”

* * *

After her birthday dinner is served and eaten in the banquet hall, Oswald notices Hallie lingering in the hallway on their way upstairs, brushing her fingers over the gilt frames that once held photographs and portraits capturing generations of Falcones and peeking into empty rooms.

Oswald puts one palm on the doorway for balance and wraps his other arm loosely around her waist to whisper conspiratorially in her ear. “Are you looking for treasure?”

“No…” Hallie exhales a little squeak when he nips at the hinge of her jaw and gives him a baleful look over her shoulder that doesn’t quell his urge to make her squeal out loud. “I dated Kitty in high school until her cousin raped my best friend. There’s a grand piano somewhere in this house, but it’s been so long I don’t remember where.”

“Kitrina Falcone didn’t play the piano.” Oswald smirks at her as she turns to face him. “I want more information,” his voice lowers into something more intimate as he pins her against the wall, “tell me absolutely everything.”

“Nope,” Hallie retorts. “I won’t tell you what I did with Kitty, or anyone else for that matter, because how I feel about other women isn’t meant for you. I will tell you,” she tugs his earlobe between her teeth and gently bites down so he moans for her, “that after we find the piano I’m going to lay on it and show you what I do with my vibrator before we have all of the birthday sex.”

Oswald cups her face and kisses the arch of her eyebrow. “Well,” he whispers. “Let’s find the piano, shall we?”

* * *

Victor Zsasz is a ladykiller in the literal sense of the word; he murdered women for sport before he became a mercenary, and he still does it when the mood strikes. Which is a psychotic urge rooted in his internalized misogyny. Which in turn comes from the conscious misconception that men are superior to women. Hallie flies in the face of that wrong assumption. Although she isn’t human, she is a woman.

Zsasz approaches her at fuck off o’clock in the morning when she goes questing for a glass of water. “I saw you last night,” he informs her smugly, “getting fucked on the piano. That’s where you belong, you know?” he leans against the countertop while she presses the button on the dispenser for crushed ice rather than cubed, “on your  _back_.”

Hallie makes a garbled noise in her throat and flails one hand at him inside the sleeve of her pajama top as if to say  _flippity flop, you need to stop_.

Zsasz takes it as the modern day equivalent of throwing down a gauntlet and he openly challenges her in the banquet hall before a war council involving the various gang leaders of Gotham. Hallie rolls her eyes when he throws a thin aerodynamic knife at her, catching it betwixt two fingers and hurling it back at his boot so the blade ends up between his toes in the blink of an eye.

“Victor,” Oswald huffs. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Seeing what your girlfriend is made of.” Zsasz gives her a condescending grin. “I think you missed,” he lilts on the sibilant, almost singsong, before he enunciates the  _d_  at the end.

“I don’t miss.” Hallie unstraps her empty sheath and tosses it onto the mantle above the fireplace to keep the shotgun lurking there company, idly twirling the familiar handle of her cleaver between her fingers while she takes deliberate steps toward him. “Qǐé needs you to be something that goes bump in the night. I don’t want your job, dude. I won’t hurt you unless I have to.”

“See, that might be a problem.” Zsasz folds his arms to disguise the motion of drawing another blade from a sheath on his back. “I want to hurt you.”

“I know.” Hallie sighs, “you want to stick your blade into my guts and twist it until I bleed all over you. That’s what gets you off. Do you think you’re special because you like to cause pain? I’ve known dozens of men like you. Hundreds, possibly. Hell,” she shrugs, birdlike. “I had a brother like you,” her soft voice cuts sharp like a blade made to slice through bone, “and I took his toes.”

Oswald catches her eyes and holds her gaze before he gives her a slow nod as if to say,  _make an example of him without doing permanent damage_. It’s amazing how good their nonverbals have gotten since her status in their relationship changed from part-time casual girlfriend to full-time serious girlfriend and part-time henchwoman. Which is one part of the compromise that makes things work between them. Hallie gives him a cruel half-smile, one corner of her mouth quirking up as she throws her cleaver hard enough to bury the blade in the marble floor in a display of pure brute strength. Of course marble is soft compared to even the lighter steel used to make weapons like her bone cleaver, but it takes strength to make a dent wider than a blade for simple extraction once she makes her point. Figuratively.

Zsasz is good with guns, but he prefers the wetwork involved with using knives; he knows how much strength it takes to leave a mark like that.

“I think you’re confused.” Hallie uses a sweetly poisonous tone, not unlike the strychnine Oswald used to kill her brother. It’s super effective. “There’s a part of your brain—the hindbrain or lizard brain, probably—that recognizes me as a predator even though you’re used to looking at women as prey. If you want to prove I’m just a weak little girl,” she holds up her bare hands and wiggles her fingers like a challenge, “take your best shot.”

Zsasz throws another thin blade at her, then draws a longer serrated knife from a hidden sheath on his calf before he invades her personal bubble to attack, the motion of his strikes graceful and brutal all at once. Hallie boops him on the nose a few times as part of her evasive maneuvering and flicks the blade of his knife with her fingers, creating reverberations violent enough to make him drop his weapon.

Hallie scoops it out of thin air before it hits the ground and brings him to his knees with his very own knife at his throat, its jagged teeth biting into his flesh.

“What are you?” Zsasz tilts his head so the blade scrapes along his skin, “you moved so fast without breaking a sweat.”

“I don’t have sweat glands,” Hallie informs him.  _Good_ , she thinks.  _If he didn’t notice that I don’t sweat during sex, then he must not have been peeping for long_.

“I didn’t notice.” Zsasz grins at her, showing his teeth in a flash of white. “I was too busy listening to your little squealing noises.”

Hallie makes a garbled noise in her throat. “Okay!” she karate chops the back of his neck with the hand that isn’t holding a knife to his throat and conks him out with a soft huff. “That’s enough nonsense out of you.”

Oswald waits for some other less important henchpeople to drag the unconscious body out of the banquet hall before he gives her a look that says he wants to undress her with his teeth. “Why didn’t you take his toes?” he wants to know.

“I’m saving amputation for later.” Hallie extracts her cleaver from the floor, the heels of her boots clicking over the marble as she goes to reclaim her sheath.

“Do you think he might try something like this again?” Oswald asks despite being able to see it coming.

“Yeah,” Hallie exhales another sigh as she straps her cleaver to her thigh over her leggings. “Zsasz hates women, Qǐé. I’d be his ideal victim if I were a white girl. I also threaten his worldview, his psychopathy. I think he was trying to beat me openly today to stop himself from coming after me in a dark alley some night in the future.”

Oswald frowns, the corners of his mouth furrowing toward his chin. “If that’s what you think, why not let him win?” he asks.

“I don’t let men like him win.” Hallie sets her jaw. “Not anymore. Not ever again.”

Oswald thinks, yet again, that her brother should’ve died slower. Hallie takes her place at his right hand, behind the armrest of his ostentatious chair that she might as well designate as a motherfucking throne. Butch takes his place to the left, where the haters are. Ekin sent a representative instead of coming himself because her Āyí Maggie is pregnant with their first child. Margaret Tzu, her mother’s sister, is one of the few left in their family who can take dragon shape. Which means their daughter will be hatched instead of born. Apparently they’re planning to name her cousin Ling, a swan to her kingfisher.

 _I wonder how that’s going to work_ , Hallie thinks,  _not having a belly button would be weird_.

When the table is full, the thunder begins and gang leaders fill the banquet hall with squabbling. Oswald waddles from his seat to grab the shotgun that lurks on the mantle and fires a warning shot into the ceiling.

 _I took the shotgun off the wall and I fired two warning shots_ , Hallie thinks as “Cell Block Tango” bubbles up from a theatrical corner of her mind,  _into his head_.

“Gentlemen! Ladies! Others!” Oswald shouts. “Let’s discuss the future with a little civility, shall we?” That said, he pops the empty shell loose from the barrel and waddles back to his throne with the shotgun perched on his shoulder. Then he slams it onto the tabletop in front of him. It takes everything in Hallie to avoid flinching, old habits from when her brother used to beat her dying hard even now. “So,” Oswald snarls while Butch twitches to his left and Hallie forces herself to unclench at his right. “Not one of you knows who orchestrated and/or executed the Arkham breakout? I find that hard to believe. I mean, the cops’ only lead is an old blind man, for god’s sake—a blind man, dead!” he shrieks and lowers his voice into something more deadly. “Who here is to be trusted? Become someone knows.”

“Uh,” says Ekin’s representative. “We thought it was you.”

Hallie scoffs. Oswald looks at her over his shoulder. Hallie shrugs as if to say,  _not your style_. Oswald nods as if to say,  _how true_. Then he turns to face Ekin’s representative and interlaces his fingers on the armrest while he leans into the kingship role. “Why would I do that? We’ve never had it better. I gave you all of the freedom in the world and business boomed for all of us,” he looks around the table in a panorama, “a new generation. Then that ginger maniac had to spoil everything. Even now that he’s dead, the public is still terrified, business is in the can, and what are we doing? Fighting among ourselves.” Oswald presses his palm flat on the tabletop and rises to his feet. “Is this how any of us wants to live?” he wonders as he waddles to the head of the table, “squabbling, brawling, running, hiding? This city belongs to us now, kids. That brings responsibilities. We need to restore confidence in our brand, if you will. We need discipline and unity. Yes?”

Hallie folds her arms while the people at the table start nodding sporadically.  _Good enough_ , she thinks. At that moment a drop dead gorgeous woman in a black dress with dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes makes her entrance. Hallie actually gapes a little at Tabitha.  _Too hot_ , she thinks,  _hot damn_.

“There will be no more chaos,” Oswald declares as he waddles back around the table to his throne, “no more gang wars, no more blood in the streets scaring decent folk. From now on if you want to kill someone, blackmail, steal, or kidnap anyone, I need to hear about it first. Understand?”

Hallie watches the woman in the entryway while the people at the table nod more enthusiastically than before. Oswald flails is hand in obvious dismissal and goes to lean against the mantle in front of the fire. Butch tells him Tabitha is lurking while Hallie puts herself between them. Oswald waddles to her side and faces the crouching tigress.

“Bravo,” Tabitha keeps her arms folded and speaks with a hint of mockery in her tone. “Quite the King Solomon, you had them nicely in line.”

“Who are you?” Oswald demands.

Tabitha doesn’t bother answering his question. “My brother would very much like to talk to you,” her eyes flick to Butch, “alone.”

“Not happening,” Hallie retorts. “Where he goes, I go.”

“Why’s she looking at me like that?” Butch wonders. “You don’t know me.”

“Relax, Butch.” Oswald gives Tabitha his business smile without trying to make it look genuine, “he has issues. Bipolar.”

“You don’t know me,” Butch repeats himself. “I’m just saying.”

“You,” Tabitha smiles at Hallie in a way that manages to be flirtatious and vaguely threatening all at once, “are welcome to join us.”

Oswald huffs and returns his attention to Tabitha. “Your brother?”

Tabitha offers him a much colder smile. “Theodore Galavan.” Oswald narrows his eyes at her. “There’s a car waiting outside,” her smile widens as she turns back to Hallie, “shall we?”

Theo is watching the news and plotting diabolically when his sister makes her grand entrance into their penthouse from the elevator with Oswald waddling in her wake and Hallie watching her like a hawk. “Mr. Cobblepot,” he switches off the television before he rises to greet his guests, “finally we meet.” Theo looks from Hallie to his sister and back again. “And who is this lovely creature?” he asks.

“Not a creature,” Hallie snarks back. Of course that’s a blatant lie, but he doesn’t need to know it.

“Call me Penguin.” Oswald reaches out to shake his hand and keep him from touching her, killing two birds with one stone. “And this is Lark.”

Theo acknowledges Hallie with a nod before he focuses on her boyfriend. “I thought you hated that name.”

Oswald folds his hands in front of his body as he shrugs, tilting his head to one side. “It grew on me.”

“Penguin it is.” Theo gives them a smile he probably thinks is charming and walks smoothly to sit behind his desk, scooting a chair out as he goes. “Please, sit.”

Oswald waddles forward to do exactly that. “How’s your head?” he asks.

“Oh,” Theo chuckles. “Healing, thank you. Gave me quite a scare.”

“You were lucky to get out of there with your life.” Oswald looks over his right shoulder to make certain Hallie is standing there beside him with one hand in her pocket on the handle of her cleaver. Of course she is.

Theo leans forward in his chair like he’s telling a secret. “Wasn’t I just?”

Oswald narrows his eyes as he processes the implications of that, snickering before his expression turns serious. “Was it luck?”

 _Oh_ , Hallie thinks when she notices a blonde woman in white pajamas and a silky robe making her entrance with a martini in hand.  _Oh no. It’s Barbara Kean. That means Galavan is behind the Arkham breakout, and the Maniax, and Essen getting shot to death. Connie is going to kill him_.

Theo chuckles. “You are a clever man,” he looks past Oswald to Barbara. “Perfect timing, dear.” With that, he turns back to Oswald. “Do you two know each other?”

“We’ve met,” Barbara informs Theo before she moves to brush her open mouth over Tabitha’s in something that is less a kiss and more an exchange of anticipation.

“Oh my.” Oswald blinks away the shock. Hallie gnaws on the inside of her cheek to avoid making a George Takei joke nobody else in the room would get or appreciate. Barbara kisses Theo hello the same way as Oswald cobbles the pieces together and gapes a bit at the picture forming in his mind while comprehension dawns. “The Arkham breakout. The G. C. P. D. massacre. Jerome and the Maniax. All you,” he grins and exhales a rueful huff of laughter. “Of course.”

“Guilty.” Theo sticks up his hands in mock surrender. “It was foolish of me to think I could trick the king of Gotham.”

Tabitha smiles without showing her teeth. Hallie wonders what the hell is going on between the siblings and Barbara.  _I’ve got a theory_ , she thinks.  _It could be incest_.

“Here,” Barbara offers her martini to Oswald. “You need this more than me.”

Hallie reaches out to grip his shoulder and digs her fingernails into his flesh through his jacket when he takes the glass. Luckily he knows better than to drink something prepared out of his sight by a lady diagnosed with clinical and criminal insanity.

“I’ll make another,” Barbara says as she hops off her perch on the desk and flounces out of the room.

Tabitha watches her go. Theo gives her a brief glance and turns back to Oswald. “My sister tells me you’re doing a stellar job of organizing your new empire.”

Oswald puts the glass on top of the desk without drinking from it. “I try.”

“You’re not the king of Gotham.” Tabitha gives him a cold smile that showcases her teeth in a distinctly predatory manner. “You’re the king of garbage.”

Hallie muffles a squawk of laughter with the heel of her hand. Oswald turns to look at her over his shoulder, raises his eyebrows until they’re arching toward his ridiculous hairline, and presses his lips together indignantly. “What?” Hallie shrugs with her elbows bent while her palms are flat and parallel to the ceiling. “That was funny.”

Tabitha grins at her wide and warm, all the chilliness fleeing her expression in favor of something hotter. “You’re adorable,” she says in that simultaneously flirtatious and predatory way that seems to be her thing.

 _I think I prefer ‘lovely creature’ to adorable_ , Hallie decides.

“A year ago I held Fish Mooney’s umbrella,” Oswald informs them in a voice equal parts ferocity and pride. “Now she’s dead by my hand, along with Maroni. Falcone is in hiding and all of their businesses are mine. They all underestimated me,” his tone flattens and sharpens like the blade of a knife. “I suggest you not make the same mistake.”

Hallie gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze before she lets him go.

“My sister is too blunt,” Theo heaves a sigh as he stands and walks to a table covered by a gauzy sheet, “but she is honest. The foundations of this great city were laid two hundred years ago by some very dedicated people. Now it’s an old crumbling pigsty full of human waste,” he scoffs at the head of the table, “it’s time to move into the future. A cleaner, brighter,” he pulls back the sheet and drops it on the floor to reveal a glowing blue scale model surrounded by dull minimalistic gray polygons meant to represent other less important structures, “future.”

Oswald waddles over to get a closer look. Hallie puts herself between her boyfriend and Tabitha, who is sexy as hell but also unapologetically a predator like herself. Oswald points to the other buildings. “Those are residential areas,” he deduces, “so thousands of homes would have to be destroyed, wouldn’t they?”

“Yeah, so?” Tabitha scrumps the martini he left on the desk and sips it.

Oswald whirls to face her, outrage evident in every line of his face. “Yeah,” Hallie snorts, “so the whole point of establishing an empire is to build something, not tear it down.” Oswald looks at her with a much softer expression. Hallie smiles at him like they’re the only people in the room. “I listen when you talk,” she informs him gently.

“Here’s the rub,” Theo says, “in order to rebuild, I need first to destroy, but I can’t do that. I mean, you’ve watched the news. I’m a hero,” he looks a little too pleased with himself when he mentions that, “but you have a certain flair for such a task.” Oswald clenches his jaw. Theo moves around the model towards him while he carries on, “you, Penguin, you will be my destroyer.”

 _Okay_ , Hallie thinks,  _your supervillain is showing, dude. I think Galavan and Loki should get together and go bowling_.

Oswald exhales an incredulous laugh before he dials it back. “Truly, I’m flattered. Thank you so much for thinking of me, but, my dear sir, have me all wrong. I have no flair for destruction,” he stops playing nice and shifts his voice into a more hostile tone. “I’m a builder, a problem solver.” At that, he points at the model with an accusatory tilt to his forefinger before he folds his hands in front of his body again. “Besides, such a huge project would need the support of hundreds of city officials.”

“Yes,” Theo says in a voice threaded with speculation, “only the highest authority could see it through correctly, say, a mayor with a landslide mandate.”

 _Whoop_ , thinks Hallie.  _There it is_.

Oswald flinches, the barest tuck of his chin. Hallie knows him well enough by now to see it. Luckily neither of the siblings pick up that particular tell. “But you’re not a candidate,” he says in a wilted tone.

“Oh, I will be.” Theo insists with false humility, “by popular demand. Alas, some of my fellow candidates actually stand a chance of winning. So,” Tabitha fetches a pair of folders in a pile on the desk and offers them to Oswald after her stilettoes click ominously across the floor, “they’ll have to go.”

 _Oh_ , Hallie thinks.  _Oh no_.

Oswald makes another incredulous noise. “…go?” he asks.

“And I’m going to need you to take a crack at me also,” Theo informs him with a slow drip of condescension saturating his voice like molasses. “And miss, of course. Don’t want anyone to think I had anything to do with my fellow candidates’ demise.”

Oswald belatedly flips through each folder to find pictures of Janice Caulfield in one and Randall Hobbs in the other. “That’s smart thinking,” he gives them a grin devoid of humor, “but with all due respect, Mr. Galavan, I’m not your man.” With that, he slaps the folders onto the table holding up the model. Hallie is glad nobody in the room is looking at her because her fingers gnarl like claws, a telltale sign of discomfort in a dragon. “You need an assassin,” Oswald informs them. “This is Gotham. You can find them in the phonebook under ‘A’.”

“One moment, Mr. Penguin.” Theo allows the charm to bleed out of his voice.

Hallie clenches her teeth because the other shoe totally just dropped. Oswald turns on his heels to face him, surprisingly graceful for a man with a noticeable limp.

“I’m sorry I took you for a man of vision.” Theo heaves a regretful sigh, his showmanship persistent even now. “Tabitha, do you want to get the remote, dear?”

Tabitha lets another, fiercer grin spread across her face. “Yay,” she giggles with a manic sort of glee and pounces on the remote.

“My sister would love to show you her favorite reality show,” Theo picks up the folders and somehow manages to pull off a menacing chuckle, “she’s addicted!”

Tabitha switches the television on and a blurry image of Gertrud appears on the screen. “Oh,” she makes a petulant sound like the woman on the screen exists solely for her entertainment, “she’s being kind of dull right now. But sometimes she cries and bangs on the door.”

Hallie actually hisses as her teeth clench again. Gertrud isn’t her favorite person—she’s racist, elitist, shrill, melodramatic as hell, and she’s forged a freakishly codependent relationship with her son as if he’s still a child and not a grown ass man—but this is not what she deserves.

Oswald waddles closer to the screen, transfixed in horror by the soft pleas his mother is making in between sobs. “Mother,” he whispers in a broken voice before he whirls on the siblings and snarls, “you’ll pay for this!”

Tabitha giggles, a harsh little sound, and folds her arms. “That’s the spirit.”

Theo offers the folders to him again. “They die, your mother lives. Simple.”

Oswald snatches them and turns back to face the screen, his lips quivering with impotent rage. It spreads to his whole body quick, tremors shuddering through his shoulders while he clenches. Hallie uses one hand and shoves Theo into his sister with enough force to knock the siblings over like dominos before she grabs Oswald by the elbow and drags him to the elevator without looking back.

When the elevator dings to signal the closing doors, Oswald glowers at her. “This is all your fault!” he yells.

“Excuse you?” Hallie arches her eyebrows as if to say,  _what the fuck?_

“I haven’t seen my mother since that night at Newgrange!” Oswald shrieks at her. “I always spend Valentine’s Day with her, but not this year, because we’re a couple and it was your birthday. I would’ve been with her if it wasn’t for you! This is all your fault!” That said, he raises his hand and moves as if to strike her.

Hallie knocks his arm back and lets her reflexes do all the work for her. “Okay,” she snaps. “I get that he just used your only weakness against you, but that doesn’t mean you can hit me. Hell, the next time you raise a hand to me will be the last time you have a hand. Got it?”

Oswald wails in frustration and yanks her roughly into his arms, burying his face in the hollow of her throat so his tears fall on the front of her dress. Hallie awkwardly strokes his ridiculous hair with one hand, wraps her other arm loosely around his shoulders, and rolls her eyes up toward the ceiling as if to say,  _why me?_

“I’m sorry.” Oswald swallows thickly. “I can see how you flinch when I make loud noises or slam things on flat surfaces to make a point. I won’t break you like I broke the wineglass. I don’t want you hurt. I love you, Hallie. I want you whole and happy.”

Hallie untangles herself from him as the elevator doors slide apart. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Theo receives a medal of valor and bravery during a live broadcast the next day. Oswald arranges a driveby shooting designed to fail. Theo announces his candidacy for mayor in the aftermath, then visits the Old Gotham branch of the public library with the medal hanging around his neck on a bright red piece of ribbon. Connie is shelving books in the stacks and negotiating her way up a ladder with a heavy armful tucked under her chin. Theo looks up at her like a hunter eyeing an owl he might like to stuff and mount on his wall. “Hello, Miss Crowley. It’s lovely to see you again.”

When he greets her, a flutter of fear clutches at her ribcage like a hand wrapping around her heart and squeezing until the chambers burst with blood and pulpy muscle. “Mr. Galavan,” Connie quips in a whisper, “are you looking for a book?”

Theo gives her what he likes to think is his most charming smile. “I’m looking for you.”

“I’m working,” Connie retorts in the voice she reserves for male patrons who think looking up her skirt or groping her is acceptable behavior.

“What time do you get off?” Theo asks. “I’d like to take you out for dinner and discuss my campaign.”

Connie doesn’t know whether to interpret that as a threat or a proposition. “What campaign?” she wonders.

“I’m running for mayor.” Theo fiddles with the medal around his neck, trying to make her notice it, maybe even placing a glamour on the metal to make her more inclined to accept his invitation. “I might need your help with funding.”

Connie scoffs. “I doubt a mayoral campaign would put a dent in your wealth, Mr. Galavan.”

“That may be true,” Theo hedges, “but support from a Crowley would make a big difference.”

 _Oh please_ , Connie thinks. “Do you want the support of the Crowley name,” she tilts her head owlishly as she looks down on him, “or the support of the most powerful witch in the city?”

Theo doesn’t even bother to dance around the elephant in the room. Instead he grins, wide and warm. “Both,” he informs her. “One of my gifts is the ability to divine whatever a person wants most, but you’re a conundrum. I can’t see what you want, Miss Crowley. I find you intriguing.”

 _Did he just try to pull an Edward Cullen on me?_  Connie thinks.  _I’m Team Edward, if the Edward in question is Edward Nygma, but I’m not Bella Swan. Nope_. “I guess that means I’m more powerful than you,” she quips.  _Which in turn means that_   _you have no power over me_ , she thinks.

“Have dinner with me,” Theo says in a tone which implies that he doesn’t often ask twice. “Please.”

“I can’t,” Connie rebuffs him without a hint of remorse, “I have to pick up my roommate and my boyfriend after my shift. We carpool together because taking multiple cars in the city is a terrible idea. I need to get back to work. Goodbye, Mr. Galavan.”

Theo stops messing with the medal around his neck. “Perhaps another time,” he says in a voice full of genuine regret.

Connie refuses to respond to that and keeps herself together until he’s gone. When she picks him up from the precinct, Ed notices her knuckles clenched white around the steering wheel on the way home. Hallie is obliviously singing along to the radio from the passenger seat. Which she occupies because she called shotgun for all eternity after Connie bought the roadster.

 _Dude_ , Eddie appears in the backseat next to him.  _What’s up with her?_

 _I have no idea_ , Ed thinks back.  _I hope it’s not something we did_.

 _All of her fingernails are bitten off_ , Eddie observes,  _her cuticles are bleeding. Whatever it was must’ve happened at work today. Let me out after we get home. I want to talk to her_.

 _Is talking all you want to do with her?_  Ed wants to know.

 _Nope_ , Eddie smirks at himself,  _but you can’t blame me for wanting Connie. Look at her. Even her freaked out face is cute_.

Ed reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, brushing his thumb over the curve of her clavicle through her blouse. Connie reaches back to cover his hand with hers while she keeps her other hand on the wheel. Ed follows her into the library and watches her stack the books she bought at the library book sale that afternoon on the edge of one shelf from one corner of his mind. Eddie leans against the ladder and puts their glasses in the breast pocket of their jacket. “What’s up?” he cocks his head and grins at her.

Connie heaves a sigh. “Galavan came to the library and he asked me out to dinner,” she folds herself onto the lowest rung of the ladder. “I don’t know whether it was a date or whatever, but he freaked me the fuck out.”

“I’ll kill him,” Eddie offers as he crouches to look her in the eyes, “if you want.”

“I love you.” Connie smooths her hand along the line of his shoulder to palm his face until her pinkie strokes the hollow under his jaw. “I mean it.”

“I love you back.” Eddie nuzzles his cheek against her palm. “Always have,” he leans in and maps the slope of her kneecap through her stockings with one hand while the fingers of his other hand tangle in her hair. “Always will,” he whispers with a vaguely menacing vehemence before he kisses her.

At some point during a very thorough kiss, Eddie puts his hand up her skirt. Connie breaks the kiss to gasp softly, even though she isn’t surprised. “Is there anything you want to do besides me?” she asks in a shy, hoarse whisper, “we could go somewhere. Maybe the arcade. Or a movie. Or we could have dinner. Anywhere you want to eat.”

Eddie kisses one side of her chin where it meets her jawline. “I want you.”

“I know,” Connie tugs her bottom lip between her teeth, “but we always have sex when you’re dominant, no pun intended. I just thought you might like to go out with me instead of staying in.”

“How about we have sex now and go out after?” Eddie suggests.

“Welp,” Connie heaves another sigh, “we don’t have to go out if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Eddie whispers in her ear, “but first let me tell you my fantasy about the ladder.”

“What,” Connie deadpans.

“It’s nothing fancy,” Eddie informs her in a low voice as his thumb rubs the length of her slit through her panties, “just you on the ladder in your thigh-highs and nothing else, dripping wet, begging for me to fuck you from behind.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Connie squirms and whimpers after he flicks his thumb over her clit. “Awesome.”

Eddie chuckles wickedly into her ear and that’s enough to make her squirm again. “Everyone is attracted to me,” he rubs her cunt a little rougher through her panties when he notices how damp the lace is. “Everyone falls for me eventually. What am I?”

Connie makes a shrill noise and clutches a rung of the ladder to keep herself from covering her mouth because she knows he likes to hear the noises she makes. “Gravity,” she gasps.

“Correct,” Eddie whispers before he slips his hand out from under her skirt.

Connie huffs when he stops touching her, then collects herself enough to stand up and climb the ladder. Eddie stops her after two rungs and unzips her skirt before he shucks his jacket and undoes his tie. Connie kicks her skirt off so it flops down the ladder to puddle on the floor and pulls her blouse over her head. Eddie unclasps her bra and drops it on the floor. Connie looks at him over her shoulder as he tugs her panties down her thighs without bothering to pull them off and spreads her legs until her feet are touching both sides of the ladder. “I live in the light,” she murmurs, “but I die if the light touches me. What am I?”

Eddie licks a long wet line up her spine to the nape of her neck before he answers. “A shadow.”

“Yes.” Connie shivers at the sensation of his saliva on her skin and squirms when he slips his hand between her legs again, spreading her folds and teasing her by touching everywhere but where she wants his fingers the most. Eddie nuzzles the curve of her shoulder and brushes her hair aside to scrape his teeth over the pulse in her neck before he palms her breast and drags the rough pad of his thumb over her nipple. Connie whines as he works two fingers into her from behind, grinding them against that sensitive place inside her while the rough pad of his thumb flicks over her clit. When she comes, it’s his name she screams among the moans he draws out of her.

Eddie puts his fingers in her mouth and whispers filthy things in her ear while she sucks the evidence of her arousal off them, his other hand still fondling her breast. “You’re so much better than I imagined,” he informs her. “Your soft, trembling flesh all slick and shiny for me. You screaming  _my_  name, not ours, or his, but  _mine_.”

“Eddie,” Connie whines after he takes his fingers out of her mouth, “if you don’t fuck me, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“I told you,” Eddie stops touching her to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his slacks, “in my fantasy you’re begging for it.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Connie whispers. “Eddie,  _please_ —”

Connie screams again when he wraps one arm tight around her waist and thrusts all the way inside her so hard and so deep she unspools right then and there, her hands clutching at the rungs of the ladder while he fucks her rougher than he ever has before. Eddie cups her face and tilts her head to kiss her over her shoulder, their lips meeting in a hot open-mouthed mess at that odd angle, the aftershocks of her orgasm fluttering around his cock. Connie shifts her hips against his, lurching between him and the ladder, his fingertips rubbing her clit until she comes for him again. Eddie comes inside her after that and they both flop onto the ladder, her breasts squishing awkwardly over one rung, the material of his undershirt sticking to the moisture that pooled in the hollow between her shoulder blades and at the small of her back. “Do you still want to go out with me?” he asks.

“Yes,” Connie mumbles, “but give me a minute. Also, maybe a shower. I’m all sweaty and gross now.”

Eddie recollects himself enough to step back and just look at her—pale cheeks flushed, dark curls mussed, legs spread, panties down, his semen dripping from her cunt along her inner thighs and onto the crotch of her underwear while she peeks at him over her shoulder. “I think you look amazing,” he says, the wickedness in his grin audible in his smug voice.

Connie rolls her eyes at him, but the sarcasm is ruined by a grin of her own.

* * *

Hallie doesn’t see Oswald the night he stabs Janice Caulfield in the neck multiple times. Theo introduces Bruce to his ward and stepniece Silver St. Cloud over lunch the next day; she isn’t a witch, because her late father wasn’t a Galavan. Zsasz tries and fails to assassinate Randall Hobbs that night, wearing a  _Vote Hobbs_ button in the attempt for a flair of irony lost on the strike force shooting at him. Butch attempts to locate Gertrud, but it’s ultimately a fruitless effort. Hallie wakes up to Oswald screaming at the fireplace, the fire itself burnt out after he douses it in whatever he was drinking when Gordon visited at fuck off o’clock in the morning.

“Okay,” she muffles a yawn in the sleeve of her pajama top. “We tried finding her your way. Now let’s try mine.”

Oswald swallows thickly as Hallie shuffles toward the fireplace, careful to avoid getting broken glass from the bottle he threw into it stuck in her piggy slippers. “What exactly is your way?” he rasps, his throat raw from shrieking.

“Connie swore a few thousand witches to her last month,” Hallie explains. “So even if she can’t locate Gertrud using your blood, she probably knows someone who can.”

Oswald wobbles to his feet, one hand clenched on the armrest of his throne while his other hand reaches out to caress her face. When he kisses her forehead, his breath reeks with remnants of the alcohol he consumed oozing from his pores.

Hallie wrinkles her whole face in disgust and takes a long step back. “Yeah,” she elongates the vowel sound and takes another step away from him after he moves closer to her. “You haven’t slept in three days. You’ve worn that suit for at least two of those days. You’re a hot mess, Qǐé. You need to shower. Like, yesterday.”

Oswald nods and waddles upstairs jerkily. Hallie lies in bed on her back and stares at the ornate ceiling while the water runs in the ensuite.  _Galavan is a warlock_ , she thinks,  _and Connie is in charge of the witches in Gotham. That makes Galavan her problem. Which in turn makes him my problem, because he’s fucking with the dude I love to achieve whatever his endgame is_.

It occurs to her that Oswald isn’t thinking straight. That’s why he did a thing like stabbing Janice himself instead of delegating her murder to one of the mercenaries or many thugs at his disposal. It’s also a huge problem for someone with a brain like his. Always churning like the gears inside an intricate old clock.

Oswald crawls into bed with her, curling up next to her on his side and taking her hand in both of his to kiss her fingers, his black hair fluffing up like wet feathers while it dries. “Thank you,” he whispers fervently.

“For what?” Hallie whispers back as his fingertips stroke the hollow of her palm, his pale skin glowing in the dark room.

“For refusing to coddle me.” Oswald chuckles more to himself than her. “You’re nothing like my mother. That’s a good thing,” he clarifies. “I don’t need another mother. I need someone who comes up with a plan—a superior one, might I add. Galavan won’t know we’re looking for my mother if we use magic to do it.”

“Yeah,” Hallie sighs, “except he probably will. Connie says he’s a warlock.”

“Of course he is.” Oswald rolls his eyes and groans because the existence of magic has made everything more complicated than he originally thought. “That makes perfect sense.”

Hallie paps his face with her other hand. “Go the fuck to sleep,” she orders. “I’ll drive you to Newgrange later.”

Oswald stops fondling the scales on the inside of her wrist to press his palm against the small of her back, pulling her onto her side and into his arms. “I think a little death should help me sleep,” he retorts before he gives her a biting kiss, his nose bumping hers while he nips at her bottom lip.

Hallie flicks her tongue into his mouth and moans in satisfaction because he brushed his teeth.  _Victory is mine_ , she thinks, shifting her weight to pin Oswald down. At this point in her cycle, she gets wet very easily, so foreplay isn’t necessary. Hallie nuzzles his nose with hers before she fetches a condom from the nightstand. Oswald keeps his eyes on her face while she rolls the condom on and holds her gaze as she takes him inside her slowly, until her eyes fall shut at the sensation that accompanies his girth. It burns to fuck him this way, harsh and bright and sweet.

When she moves, he sits up and wraps himself around her to bury his face in her neck and scrape teeth over her collarbone while she rides him. Hallie throws her arms tight around his shoulders and plunges her fingers into his hair, still damp after his shower. Oswald matches her slow rhythm until she comes, then fucks her as hard as he can from beneath her. When he comes, he passes out in the aftermath while his cock goes soft inside her. Hallie gets out of bed to dispose of the used condom, put on a new pair of underwear, and find her pajama bottoms. When she gets under the blankets again, Oswald wakes up long enough to cuddle her closer and jumble their legs together.

Hallie falls back to sleep with his breath warm on the nape of her neck, feeling incongruously safe in the arms of a monster who loves her.

* * *

Oswald ends up sleeping until the afternoon. Hallie drives him to Newgrange and kicks her boots off in the entryway while he unties his more expensive shoes and carefully places them beside the front door.

Ed and Connie are waltzing in the kitchen to “I Put a Spell on You” with the CCR record spinning on his turntable, their looping steps not exactly a waltz once kissing becomes part of the equation. Ed, between escorting Connie to cotillion and a ballroom dance unit included in their physical education course at Gotham Academy, is a klutz who can dance.

Hallie makes a gagging noise undercut with a giggle to showcase her lack of malice. “Gross,” she fizzles out on the sibilant and gives her best friend a fond smile when she breaks the kiss.

“Welp.” Connie shrugs with one shoulder, like a crow but with a shade more panache. “We could’ve been having sex on the counter. We did that yesterday.”

Hallie exhales a mournful sound. “I eat here.”

Ed puts his glasses back on, adjusting the spectacles with one hand. “Did you know a group of penguins is called a rookery? Which is interesting because the word rookery also denotes a flock of rooks,” he grins at Connie. “Which are corvidae.”

Oswald ignores him because he doesn’t have any time for avian puns. “Miss Crowley,” he waddles into her kitchen and leans on the granite island for balance. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Nope,” Connie deadpans.

Oswald and Connie don’t quite know what to do with each other. Connie sets his teeth on edge because she gleaned a disturbing amount of knowledge from tasting his blood, and learning that magic is real threw off his groove. Oswald makes Connie uncomfortable because of what she knows from reading his bloodline like a magazine, and he’s also the first person Hallie’s dated seriously in years. Connie paid attention to her friends’ romantic entanglements during her period of perpetual singularity. It’s obvious to her that whatever is going on between them is different than what came before. There’s an uneasy coexistence that convergences on Hallie, who functions as their common ground.

“Connie,” Hallie sighs, “please. Galavan is holding his mother hostage. I need you to find her.”

Ed presses his lips into a thin line, his eyes narrowing with menace at the mention of that name. Connie shakes her head so fast one black curl flops out of the clip in her hair.

Oswald leans both elbows on the island and gnashes his teeth in distaste as a squelchy, visceral feeling takes root in his guts. “You’re afraid of him,” he deduces. “Why?”

“There are three kinds of magic,” Connie explains. “White magic helps people. Grey magic exists on a spectrum between the extremes of black magic and white magic, but it’s essentially neutral. Black magic hurts people. Which doesn’t necessarily make it evil, because people who practice the black arts can hurt themselves instead of other people. When my cousin casts a curse, she experiences something called blowback and loses fingernails or toenails. Which grow back. Witches can lose teeth, fingers, toes, whole extremities or limbs, or hair. I know a curse worker who gets tumors whenever she casts one, another who starts hemorrhaging internally. Galavan has no qualms about hurting other people. I met him the night he stabbed Jerome. I watched him perform the blackest art in the middle of a gala and pretend it was a heroic act. Death magic is the blackest art,” she clarifies, “taking power in murder. Galavan practices black magic. Yes, I’m scared of him. I’m not going to make a move against him until I figure out a foolproof way to destroy him without resorting to the black arts myself. I’m sorry.”

“Galavan propositioned her,” Ed chimes in.

“What?” Hallie yelps before she bites down on the  _t_  at the end. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Connie turns and sags against the countertop, the lights flickering overhead while the fridge rattles and a vine of ivy crawls in through the open window above the sink. Oswald stands up straight, his eyes widening in fear as the vine wraps itself around her hand, giving her fingers a comforting squeeze. Connie wiggles her fingers and they glow with a soft green shimmer of power, uncurling the ivy so it retreats back to clinging along the manor wall. “I didn’t want to worry you,” she sighs.

“Okay,” Hallie snarks back, “but I’m worried. I don’t want a creepy incestuous warlock dude whose sister kidnapped my boyfriend’s mom creeping on you. Does he know you’re a hemomancer?”

“Nope.” Connie turns and faces them.

Ed wraps one arm loosely around her shoulders and takes her hand in his as the green shimmer fades out of her knuckles. “Fascinating,” he murmurs to himself.

Hallie nods. “Good,” she folds her arms. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Oswald shakes off the residual fear and unclenches his jaw. “What’s a hemomancer?” he wants to know.

“None of your business,” Connie retorts.

Oswald looks at Hallie as if to say,  _tell me everything_. Hallie gives him a little shake of her head as if to say,  _not my information to give_. Oswald huffs. “Galavan must have an endgame in mind,” he deduces, “it can’t just be chaos for chaos’ sake.”

Connie exhales a long whoosh of air when a timer starts counting down, the last minute beeping as every second passes away. Ed lets her go and puts on her tyrannosaurus rex oven mitts to extract a pan of cornbread from the warmer underneath the oven. “What we don’t know could fill a book,” she mutters as she procures a shiny, corpulent silver bowl out of a cabinet below the wraparound granite countertop and wiggles her fingers over it.

Oswald watches as a salad assembles itself within the bowl: romaine, slivered almonds, homemade croutons from the saucepan on the stove, and marinated crabmeat drizzled with zesty lemon vinaigrette dressing, also homemade, an emulsion of olive oil, white vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, mayonnaise, stone ground mustard, celery seed, garlic powder, and tarragon. Oswald idly wonders if they did anything with the rest of the zestless fruit until the beeping stops and Hallie uses her bare hands to take a pan of sole fillets topped with lemon slices out of the oven. Connie busies herself with casting a charm that cleans up the mess: the disposable foam and plastic containers that once held ingredients sorting themselves into trash and recycling under the sink, the squeezed lemons and shallot husks and tarragon stems conjured into the compost bin outside the greenhouse.

“Tabitha was flirting with me,” Hallie cocks her head speculatively, “maybe I can use that.”

“Nope,” Connie pops the  _p_ sound with finality.

“No,” Oswald snaps at the same time.

“I concur.” Ed smiles at her shyly. “I know you only tolerate me because of Connie, but I consider you my friend. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I don’t only tolerate you.” Hallie puts the fillets on top of the stove and gently boops his shoulder. “We are friends, Ed. Okay?”

Ed adjusts his glasses with both hands, a full blown grin spreading over his thin face.

“Where does the food come from?” Oswald wonders after Connie snags a crouton from the salad bowl and munches on it.

Connie finishes chewing before she answers. “Here,” she flails one hand to indicate her kitchen. “Like in  _Cinderella_ , when the fairy godmother makes a carriage out of a pumpkin and horses out of mice and footmen out of lizards and a coachman out of a goose. Witches can’t make something out of nothing, but we can make something out of something else. It’s basic alchemy. For example, we can turn lead to gold, but if we conjure the gold by itself without a catalyst like the lead, it has to come from elsewhere. Like a bank vault, or a jewelry store, or a pawnshop where you exchange gold for cash. I bought the salad ingredients at the supermarket and conjured them into the bowl from where I left them in the kitchen when I put my groceries away.”

Oswald smiles because her enthusiasm is catching. It’s obvious that Connie is a librarian in the way she gives information, like someone who genuinely loves sharing knowledge, so much she lights up inside when she does. “That actually makes a lot of sense.”

“Witchcraft has rules.” Connie wiggles her fingers at the fridge and two glass pans full of cake batter appear on the countertop. “All magic does.” At that, she picks up another mixing bowl, a glass one decorated with roses, and pours the concoction in the bowl on top of the batter. “It takes energy to do magic, so you get back what you put into your casting, and you have to know the rules to practice your craft.”

“Wait!” Hallie flails, “are you making chess squares?”

“Yes,” Connie finishes pouring and hands the bowl to her, “regular and chocolate.”

Hallie makes a happy squealing noise Oswald has only heard during sex until now before she licks the spatula Connie left in the bowl. “What’s a chess square?” he wants to know.

“It’s sheet cake with topping made out of cream cheese and powdered sugar,” Connie explains. “It’s a Southern thing. I inherited a family recipe from my mother. I haven’t made them in a long time, not since—”

“That comfort food bakeoff in college,” Hallie finishes the story for her. “Which she won.”

“Do you still have the trophy?” Ed asks before he sticks his finger in the bowl, swiping it through a smidge of raw topping for a taste.

Connie nods, sheepishly. “It’s a tiny plastic thingamabob,” she informs Oswald, “someone with a labelmaker put a sticker that says ‘Gotham University Comfort Food Champion’ on the goblet-looking part.”

Hallie scrapes the spatula along the sides of the bowl to get at the good stuff. “Didn’t you use it as a makeshift goblet in finals week of our senior year because we ran out of cups and everyone in our room was too busy to do the dishes?”

“Yes,” Connie nods so her cockeyed ringlet bounces like a corkscrew against her cheek. “Yes I did. Kristen just rinsed her giraffe mug in the sink and called it good. Meanwhile, you drank nothing but iced mochas from the café in the library with not one, not two, but three shots of espresso, until you got so jittery you practically shook out of your own skin.”

“That’s why you don’t drink coffee!” Oswald points at her and grins as if to say,  _aha!_ “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Hallie shrugs, “keemun black tea for the win.”

Connie resets the oven, puts the pans containing her unbaked chess squares inside, and scoops rice from another pan on the stove into another bowl. “Who’s hungry?” she asks.

Hallie raises both hands in the air to emphasize the extent of her hunger and points to herself with her forefingers. Ed raises one hand, leaving no negative space between his fingers.

“Oh,” Oswald makes an appreciative sound at the smell of the sole fillets topped with lemon slices. “I am.”

Connie wiggles her fingers and conjures four place settings onto the island that surround the fish, the salad, the rice, and cornbread. Ed pulls out a stool for Connie before he takes his seat beside her.

“Let’s eat.”

* * *

Hallie and Butch haul a steamer trunk with Sid Bunderslaw inside down the hallway and into the elevator, rising to the penthouse occupied by the Galavan siblings. Oswald is fraying at the seams because his mother has been missing for a few weeks now. Hallie sits on top of the trunk and takes his hand in both of hers because she doesn’t know what else to do. Tabitha flirts with Butch and Theo orders her to leave him alone. Which makes her wonder if he’s jealous. Which in turn might be proof of her incest theory. It’s either that, or Theo has compassion for Butch.

 _I think incest makes infinitely more sense_ , Hallie decides.

Oswald is groveling. It’s not a good look for him. Hallie knows on some level he’s trying to manipulate Theo, but he’s also sweating visibly and there’s a telltale quiver in his lips after Theo refuses to release his mother. Hallie wonders if the Galavan siblings can tell she’s fantasizing about splitting Theo’s skull in two with her cleaver. It’s made specifically for cutting through bone. It’s a thing she could do, if she wanted.

“Off you go,” Theo says, the dismissal clear in his voice.

Oswald clenches his jaw and waddles away. Hallie puts herself between the siblings and Butch, in case Tabitha gets any ideas while their backs are turned.

“Stay by the phone,” Theo adds as an afterthought.

Oswald inhales sharply before he leaves the penthouse. Hallie sits in the backseat with him while Butch drives them to the mansion. Oswald is such a child sometimes and he needs his mother. Hallie doesn’t want to be a mother figure, but as his girlfriend, she gets stuck taking care of him. Oedipus, eat your heart out.

“We grab him up!” Oswald shouts as he waddles into the banquet hall. “We grab him and we hurt him until he tells us where she is, and then we hurt him more!”

“Okay,” says Butch, “is that a good idea?”

“Do you have a better one?” Oswald snarls.

“We could get the sister,” Butch suggests.

“And then what?” Oswald yells, “he’s still out there! And does he love his sister as much as I love my mother? I don’t think so!”

Hallie flops into a chair with a sigh. “I hope you don’t love your mother the same way he loves his sister,” she mutters. Oswald whirls to look at her, stricken, his eyes glinting with either madness or unshed tears, possibly both.

At that inopportune moment, one of the henchmen informs him that Captain Barnes’ strike force hit the counting house that night and took a cool two million. Oswald beats the man half to death with a fire poker, blood splattering on his face. Hallie watches as he twitches on the floor and thinks,  _prey_. Oswald stops whacking the stuffing out of him, turning to face Hallie and Butch with the fire poker held aloft. “Butch!” he yells triumphantly, “I have an idea!”

Hallie sighs once more, with feeling before she rises from the chair and shuffles off.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Oswald demands.

“It’s after one in the morning,” Hallie retorts. “I’m going to bed.”

“Now that,” Oswald points an approving finger at her, “is a good idea.”

Oswald follows her up the stairs to his bedroom. Hallie keeps her spare pajamas in one of the drawers. Oswald waddles into the ensuite to wipe the blood from his face, but upon closer inspection there’s splatter in his hair as well. Hallie goes to brush her teeth, only to find him naked and hanging up his suit. There’s nothing childish about the look in his eyes, the intimate weight of his gaze on her with his cock half-hard between his legs.

“Nope,” Hallie makes shooing motions with her hands. “I am not banging you while you’ve got blood on your face, you big disgrace, somebody better put you back into your place—” Oswald apparently doesn’t listen to Queen, because he glowers at her when she quotes the lyrics at him. “It’s a song,” she clarifies. “I don’t actually think you’re a disgrace, but I do think you need to shower. There’s blood in your ridiculous hair.”

“I don’t have time for haircuts,” Oswald wails, “my mother is missing!”

Hallie rolls her eyes and goes to meet the sink, the buzzing noise of her electric toothbrush obscuring his indignant huff. Oswald waddles to stand behind her, smoothing his hands underneath her pajama top to palm her breasts. Hallie spits toothpaste into the sink after her toothbrush shuts off, rinses her mouth, and reaches for a container of floss. Oswald tugs on her nipples, twisting the nubs between his thumbs and forefingers. Hallie exhales a little squeak and drops the floss into the bowl of the sink. Oswald snickers when her knees buckle and wraps one arm tight around her waist before he slips his other hand between her legs, caressing her through her panties. Hallie sighs when he nips the scales at the nape of her neck, his fingers moving roughly over the fabric of her underwear while his other hand slowly but surely undoes the buttons of her pajama top.

Oswald kisses her when she turns to face him, their noses bumping together while their lips meet, her flannel shirt fluttering onto the tile floor of the ensuite. Hallie wraps one hand around him and swirls her thumb over the head of his cock to rub his precome in. Oswald moans into her mouth and breaks the kiss to sink his teeth into her neck, licking and biting and sucking his way from her throat to her breasts and further down her torso until he reaches the waistband of her pajama bottoms.

Hallie squeaks again when he tugs her pajama bottoms down along with her panties and buries his face between her legs. Oswald fucks her with his tongue until she comes with a loud squeal, her fingers squeezing the edge of the sink so hard the porcelain cracks. Hallie pushes him down on his back and kicks her pajama bottoms all the way off to straddle him, tearing open a condom from the medicine cabinet and tossing the foil packet over her shoulder into the wastebasket under the sink. Oswald pulls her into his arms as the echoes of her orgasm clench around his cock and sinks his teeth into the swell of her left breast hard enough to leave a mark. When he comes, he flops onto his back. Hallie nuzzles his nose with hers. Oswald cups her face, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb and brushing his fingertips over the scales on the back of her neck.

“Stop,” Hallie whispers. “Shower time.”

“I know that song,” Oswald informs her breathlessly. “Hammertime.”

“Okay,” Hallie makes an indignant noise, “how can you know ‘U Can’t Touch This’ but not ‘We Will Rock You’? Dishonor on you. Dishonor on your cow. Dishonor on your whole family—”

Oswald yanks her into something that is less a kiss and more an exchange of ragged air, his flaccid cock slipping out of her as she rises to her feet and drags him with her. Hallie peels the used condom off, banishes it into the wastebasket, pushes him into the shower, and fetches another foil packet from the medicine cabinet before she joins him inside.

* * *

Connie spends her days off buried in the family grimoire and other magical tomes collected by her granduncle, who spent his life searching for a spell that would let him manifest powers of his own. It was ultimately a fruitless effort because Ronnie Crowley died without magic when she was fourteen, but his obsession yielded the occult library that she inherited from him. Ed finds her passed out in the ginormous bed they bought together with her glasses askew when he returns from the precinct, surrounded by open volumes and composition books loaded with notes in her loopy chickenscratch.

 _Galavan family name indicative of Dumas primogeniture_ , reads a note scrawled in the margins of one page,  _but what magical bloodline did they mix with??? Theo admits to possessing the power of divination, i.e. the ability to see what a person wants most. Tabitha is ostensibly nonmagical, so they probably share a father, but not a mother, assuming their father was also nonmagical. What if the magic skipped a generation??? What if only the male descendants inherit the power in his branch of whichever bloodline???_

Ed grins at her copious use of question marks and bends to kiss her lips. Connie wakes up, fulfilling the role of the archetypal fairytale heroine that he attached to her so long ago before he knew her like he does now, and curls her fingers into his hair while she licks into his mouth. Ed crawls on top of her, careful not to disturb her research materials as he presses her into the mattress.

“Did you know,” she pants when he nuzzles her neck, “that shamans of the Miagani tribe imprisoned a warlock underground on the island centuries before it became Gotham? Legend has it that his slumbering bad vibes are what makes the city so grim—” she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth when he flicks his thumb over her nipple through her camisole, “—and predisposed to violent criminals.”

“ _Fascinating_.” Ed stops kissing her throat and flips through one of her notebooks. “How does it work?”

Connie shrugs underneath him, one shoulder hunching into her froth of dark curls as her fingers scoop underneath his shirt. “I have no idea,” she admits, “my family had nothing to do with it. Uncle Ronnie got a grimoire from the Van Derm family, a Miagani shamanic bloodline who intermarried with the British colonists until they passed for white. Alan Wayne, my great-great-grandfather, married Catherine Van Derm, my great-great-grandmother, and so the grimoire ended up here.”

Ed stops on a yellowed page containing the Crowley family tree and strokes his fingers over her name:  _Constance Rose Crowley, b. 31 October 1988_. There is a dash beside her birthdate, a long pause before her death. Ed remembers from literary studies that dashes in texts are meant to represent a moment of silence. “The more I take,” he whispers in her ear. “The more I leave behind. What am I?”

“Footsteps,” Connie answers.

Ed tangles one hand in her black hair and tugs on her dark curls hard enough to make her moan. There will be time for silence later, when they’re dust and what they’ve left behind are names in the pages of old books like these, but for now he slips his other hand between her legs while she nips at his collarbone and does his best to make her scream.

* * *

Tabitha visits Oswald at the mansion with a list of buildings for him to burn down while her brother asks Gordon for an endorsement and is rebuffed. After a series of unfortunate events that begin with Selina leading Butch to the Pike siblings in the Narrows and the strike force raiding a weapons depot called the Merc, Bridgit Pike and her brothers pull five jobs in one night, setting various corporations secretly connected to Wayne Enterprises on fire. Tabitha cut out Bunderslaw’s eye for a retinal scanner attached to his vault. Which contained a knife with the Wayne family crest engraved on the hilt. Butch recommends a woman from his old neighborhood who is supposedly an expert on the history of Gotham, an antiques dealer named Edwige.

Oswald dials Connie to flesh out a hunch. “Miss Crowley,” he greets her when she picks up.

Connie takes his call halfway up a ladder in the stacks. “I’m at work,” she informs him.

“Is there a witch in your coven who goes by the name Edwige?” Oswald asks.

Connie sets the books in her arms on the edge of the nearest shelf to hold the phone. “Yes.”

Oswald nods to himself. “Does she know things?”

“Yes,” Connie sighs, “psychometrically.”

“What does that mean?” Oswald wants to know.

“It’s a psionic ability to glean knowledge from a person or object through physical contact,” Connie explains, “otherwise known as psychometry.”

“Thank you, Miss Crowley.” Oswald grins even though she can’t see it. “You’re a veritable font of information.”

“I am a librarian,” Connie deadpans before she hangs up on him.

Butch invites Edwige to the mansion. When she arrives, her sharp eyes appraise the knife with a glint of recognition followed by a telltale sign of fear that crawls up her spine. When she makes a point of not touching the knife, Oswald deduces that Edwige has laid her eyes and hands on it before. Edwige keeps her hands in her pockets while she explains the cursed history of the knife that she gleaned years ago before it fell into the hands of Bunderslaw, the feud between the Waynes and the Dumas family that ended in blood. Then she warns him, “you’re in deep waters, Mr. Penguin.”

“Thank you, Edwige.” Oswald smiles with a touch of madness. “That is where penguins thrive.”

Hallie returns to the mansion after a late shift to find blood on the tabletop and Butch nowhere to be seen. “What did you do?” she asks.

“Butch is the only man that I can trust,” Oswald explains, “so I sent him to Galavan. If we’re lucky, he can find my mother while Miss Crowley figures out a foolproof way to destroy  _him_.”

Hallie leans against the mantle over the fireplace and kicks her shoes off. “I’m going to assume that because you specified with a male pronoun there, you don’t mean you can’t trust me.”

Oswald watches her flop gracelessly into the chair to his left, across from where he maimed Butch earlier. “I trust you.”

“Good.” Hallie muffles her yawn in one of her sweater paws.

Maybe penguins thrive in deep water, but he can’t shake the dreadful sensation of drowning that has taken root in his lungs. Oswald takes her other hand in both of his to kiss her fingers, nuzzling her knuckles with his nose while he struggles to breathe.

* * *

Theo invites Connie and Ed to have dinner at the penthouse on the same night Bridgit kills her brothers and Selina holds Leslie hostage, while Tabitha attempts to reprogram Butch and undo the rewiring Zsasz did to his brain. Connie declines his invitation and burns it outside the manor to make certain the paper doesn’t contain a hex or curse that might be triggered by incineration.

“What has teeth, but can’t bite?” Ed asks while she turns her face to avoid the sting of smoke in her eyes.

“A comb,” Connie murmurs. “What gets smaller when ideas grow?”

Ed grins and kisses the arch of her eyebrow, his nose bumping softly against her temple. “A pencil,” he answers.

“I think Galavan is going to hurt Bruce,” Connie deduces. “I don’t think he wants me dead, but Jonathan Wayne—the dude who maimed his ancestor Caleb Dumas—is my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather too. Hell,” she exhales a rueful huff, “I have more of a bone to pick with the Wayne family than he does. Nathaniel Wayne burned Annie Crowley at the stake in 1640 and she cursed him with her last breath. Caleb Dumas lost a lower extremity, but he survived.”

“Caleb lost the woman he supposedly loved,” Ed reminds her, “and Jonathan Wayne destroyed the Dumas legacy.”

 _I wonder_ , Connie thinks, _which of those was most important to him_.


	8. A Catalogue of Monstrous Types

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 2x07 (“Mommy’s Little Monster”) and 2x11 (“Worse Than a Crime”).

**Is magic a route to the radical imagination, or simply a shortcut to conventional acquisitions, commercial and domestic? What separates the witch’s foretelling from the capitalist’s risk analysis, her spellbinding from public relations? _“Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”_**

**But ultimately it’s beside the point to question the morality of a witch’s existence. A witch summons hidden forces to castrate the social order, poison the hearth, and fly above her “natural” station. She presides over irrepressible antagonisms, drawing on the bottomless cauldron of resistance. Her power is real.**

_The New Inquiry, Vol. 21 Editors’ Note: Witches_

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 7**  
A Catalogue of Monstrous Types

* * *

**VIII**

The total catalogue of rhetorical tropes and figures doubles as a catalogue of monstrous types. This structural feature serves as the articulation of visual and sonic monsters.

* * *

Connie is stealing a shirt from Ed’s dresser to sleep in when she finds the badge he kept after he killed Tom Doherty while she watched. “Oh,” she groans externally. “Oh no.”

Ed looks up from his notebook. “What’s up?” he asks.

Connie arches her eyebrows at him as she holds up the badge. “I cannot believe you kept it,” she huffs and leaves the room.

“Where are you going?” Ed scrambles off the bed and catches up with her in the hallway.

“I’m taking your creepy murder trophy outside and burying it,” Connie explains. “I’m going to conjure it from my topsoil into the liquid outer core of the earth and melt it down.”

“Seriously?” Ed puts his hand on her shoulder. “Isn’t that overkill?”

“You would know,” Connie retorts. “You stabbed Tom eleven times in the chest and kept his badge like a creepy murder trophy.”

Ed presses his lips into a thin line. “Stop calling me creepy,” he says, his voice pitching higher in distress. “I hate it when you call me that.”

Connie swats his hand until he takes it back. “Stop being creepy and I will.”

Kristen picks that inopportune moment to drop by. “Connie?” she calls from the entryway. “Ed?” Unfortunately neither Ed nor Connie hears her voice, so Kristen wanders through the kitchen into the winding hall toward the library. When she overhears Connie talking about conjuring, she doesn’t jump to a witchy conclusion; she doesn’t hear the phrase “creepy murder trophy” until the second time Connie says it, and then she sees the badge in her hand. Kristen covers her mouth with her palms to stifle the gasp worming out from under her tongue, her mind tangled up like askew yarn unraveled and spun again into a lumpy ball of string.

Ed sees Kristen before Connie does, his smile wilting after he sees the horrified expression on her pretty face, and in the blink of an eye he wraps his hands around her throat.

Connie yelps and curls her thumb over two fingers, her forefinger and pinkie sticking out with magic threading between her knuckles. “ _Stop_ ,” she hisses.

Ed slams bodily into the opposite wall and crumples, his skinny legs giving way from the force of the unseen blow. Eddie appears down the hall and beckons to him. Connie is too focused on Kristen to notice him leave the hallway.

Kristen slumps to the floor, clutching her neck and gulping air into her shaking lungs. “You killed Tom,” she wails, the sound torn out of her like steel wool scrubbing a filthy pot, and there are tears clumping in the corners of her eyes as she looks at Connie. “You _knew_. You knew he was dead. You’re monsters. You both are. You deserve to be at Blackgate. You deserve the horrible things people do to each other in prison—”

“Welp,” Connie sighs, “the implication that I deserve to be raped— _again_ —was uncalled for. Now I kind of want to let Ed strangle you,” she laughs once to make it clear that was a joke before she offers a hand to Kristen and tries not to flinch when her friend recoils from being touched by her. “Tom was the monster, you said so yourself. I’m still the same person you geeked out with about Flannery O’Connor the first time we met. I’m the same person who made you breakup cookies with the miscellaneous candy we had in our dorm every time you dumped a dude or got dumped. I’m the same person who helped you go through your grandmother’s things after she died. Kristen,” her tone descends into begging territory, “please. I’m still your friend.”

Kristen presses both palms against the wall and crawls back to her feet. “I have no idea who you are,” she whispers in a small broken voice. Connie does flinch then. Kristen walks sideways down the hall and looks over her shoulders to make certain no one will try stopping her or strangling her again.

* * *

“Did you see the way she looked at me?” Ed hunches over the sink in the guest bathroom and looks in the mirror.

Eddie leans against the closed door. “Do you want to know a secret?” he asks.

“What?” Ed snarls.

Eddie grins at himself. “I’m not the one who tried to strangle her. That was all you, dude. It was you who stabbed Officer Doherty too. I’m not saying you did the wrong thing. I’m Edward Nygma and I approve this murder!” he gives Ed a thumbs up, “but I wasn’t in the driver’s seat. It wasn’t even my idea.”

“That makes no sense!” Ed protests too much. “All you are is a projection of impulse, nothing more.”

“That,” Eddie frowns, “is uncalled for.”

“Called for?” Ed adjusts his glasses with sloppy fingers, “you hijacked my body while I was asleep in Seattle and engaged in oral sex with people we didn’t know!”

“Okay,” Eddie snickers. “Yeah, that’s true, but I did it for your own good. I did it for Connie,” he elaborates, “so you wouldn’t be taking shots in the dark, so to speak, when you finally solved the mystery of how we feel about her. Took you long enough,” he smirks. “If I were you, which I sort of am, I would’ve had Connie up against a wall in nothing but those stockings and garters with my face between her legs and my fingers stirring her up years ago.”

“Be quiet,” Ed snaps.

Eddie shakes his head slowly. “I don’t think I will,” he says. “This is fun and it’s good for you.”

Ed holds onto the sink until his pale knuckles clench white. “How is it good for me to be driven insane?” he shouts.

“I’m trying to show you who you are,” Eddie informs him. “How have you not realized that yet?”

“Why are you doing this?” Ed wants to know.

“How did it feel when you wrapped your hands around her throat?” Eddie asks.

Ed scowls when his glasses slip along his nose and pushes them upward. “I was terrified she would ruin everything,” he says.

Eddie unfolds his arms to tuck his hands in his pockets. “Except she won’t,” he retorts, “you got away with it.”

“That’s not the point!” Ed raises his voice and bites down on the consonant.

“That is absolutely the point!” Eddie yells so loudly it seems to echo in their mind, “you felt the rush, didn’t you? Coming so close to killing again. Knowing you would’ve been forced to kill her if Connie didn’t intervene because she knows what you’ve done. Knowing you might have to kill her anyway when Connie isn’t around to stop you. Knowing you were standing at the edge of uncertainty and peering into the void.” Eddie is suddenly extremely loud and incredibly close, his body fuzzy at the edges, the integration process Connie tried to force on them months ago with tenderness finally happening through violence. “Now tell me!” he growls. “How did it feel?”

Ed looks at him reflection in the mirror as Eddie fades out and the halves of his fractured mind become whole. “Beautiful,” he murmurs to himself.

* * *

Connie texts her cousin after Kristen flees the manor. Eve finds her at a bubble tea shop a few blocks from the Clocktower. Which in turn is a few blocks from the precinct. Kristen doesn’t fight or fly when Eve sits in the seat across from her. Instead she blurts, “I’m dating another woman.”

Eve arches one perfect blonde eyebrow as if to say, _I didn’t see that coming_.

“I haven’t ever dated a woman before,” Kristen continues after she takes another sip of her banana flavored bubble tea. “I let Hallie eat me out in college a few times when I didn’t have a boyfriend, but that was a friends with benefits thing. Not a phase, but nothing serious,” she heaves a sigh. “Well, you know how Hallie is. Or was.”

Eve hums to indicate that she does indeed know how Hallie was. When a waitress appears, she orders custard pudding flavored bubble tea. “Who exactly is this mystery woman?” she asks.

“Renee Montoya,” Kristen says quietly, “she’s a detective with the major crimes unit.”

“Connie told me she told you to stop dating alpha male asshole cops,” Eve flips a froth of golden curls over her shoulder and puts her elbows on the table before she interlaces her fingers, “so you’re dating an alpha female detective instead. I guess that’s progress.”

“I wanted to ask Hallie for some advice on how to…” Kristen flushes a pretty shade of pink, “…how to please a woman orally. It seems very silly now that I have bigger problems than not knowing how to give cunnilingus.” Abruptly, she changes the subject. “You know Ed is a murderer.”

Eve nods and casts a glamour to keep anyone from overhearing what she’s about to say. “I’m the Holiday Killer,” she confesses, “Harvey and I did most of those murders together. I wanted to kill Vincenzo for what he did to Connie, but I couldn’t kill him right off the bat without making my motive obvious. Maroni burned Harvey’s mother and twin brother alive when he was young, so our vendettas meshed.”

Kristen sits quietly for a long while churning that information in circles in her mind. Eve always felt a little off to her, so unlike with Connie—one of her best and only friends—and to a lesser extent Ed—whom she actually had a crush on despite his oddity—she isn’t shocked or appalled by this revelation. “That’s why those murders had different modus operandi,” she whispers, “because there were two killers. I knew it,” she adjusts her glasses with dainty fingers. “How did you get away with it?”

“I’m a witch,” Eve informs her. “I used glamour, the grey art of illusion.”

Suddenly a great many things make perfect sense: the spotlessness of the manor, the deliciousness of the food Connie bakes or cooks, the rainfall when Eve gets miffed, the strangeness that subtly permeates the very air when either Connie or Eve is near. “Connie is a witch too,” Kristen deduces, “isn’t she?”

Eve thanks the waitress after her bubble tea arrives and sips before she speaks. “There’s a whole thing where the witches in our coven take an oath not to tell people we love about our true nature. Connie loves you, so I guess you qualify.”

“Tom deserved to die,” Kristen swallows thickly at her very own confession, “he threatened to kill me if he ever caught me with another man. That’s not why I started dating another woman, but I was terrified of him coming back and hurting me. Now that I know he won’t, I feel so much better. I’m a horrible person. I’m just as much of a monster as I said Ed and Connie were.”

“I say,” Eve takes another long sip of tea, “own your monstrosity if that’s what helps you survive. I was diagnosed as a highly functioning sociopath when I was young because I kept cutting up stray cats to read the future in their entrails. Not a power I possess. I have no affinity for divination in any form. Which is ironic, because my mother is a powerful cleromancer.”

“What’s…” Kristen pauses to search for an unmodifier for an unfamiliar noun, “cleromancy?”

“It’s the grey art of casting lots and reading the probability of a future event in however the bones fall,” Eve informs her. “Connie was basically my conscience when we were growing up. I didn’t kill anymore cats after I realized the idea of dead kittens upset her.”

Kristen scrunches up her face in disgust. “This is such an odd topic of conversation,” she mumbles into the stylized rim of her teacup.

“Connie is the person I love the most,” Eve says, “not Harvey, not anyone else. Connie was there for me when no one else was. My favorite cousin. My blood sister. My best friend. I swore to her because she is the best person I know, the only truly good witch I’ve ever met. I know we never really became friends because I wasn’t around when you lived with Connie and Hallie, but if she loves you enough to kill for you, that means you’re more worthy than I thought.”

“Thank you.” Kristen frowns as a strange amalgamation of confusion and backhanded compliment furrows the flesh between her eyebrows. “I think.”

Eve smiles, a flash of white teeth framed by dark red lips. “I say you’re welcome.”

* * *

“Ed?” Connie softly knocks on the bathroom door. “I didn’t mean to throw you against the wall. I don’t use offensive magic very often. I forgot how much stronger I am now. I’m so sorry—” Ed opens the door and curls his fingers into the flesh of her waist to steady her after she practically falls through the doorway. Connie automatically puts her hands on his chest, but then steps back and pushes him away in the aftermath of the squelchy visceral response twisting her guts. “I need space,” she blurts. “I think you should move out.”

Ed gnarls his empty fingers into his palms and clenches them at his sides. “No,” he says flatly.

“Yes,” Connie retorts.

Ed takes a step toward her and his expression crumples when Connie steps back. “Why?” he wants to know.

“You wanted to kill her.” Connie swallows thickly. “Your first instinct when Kristen figured out what you did was to attack her. You wanted her dead. You still do. I can tell. I thought you killed Tom because you wanted to protect somebody we both loved, but I was so wrong. You liked it. You liked how powerful it made you feel. You liked getting away with murder.” Ed opens his mouth to lie, to protest, to beg. Connie shakes her head so fast her curls bounce over her shoulders. “I’m a hemomancer,” she whispers, “do you think I don’t know what bloodlust feels like? I can sense it, Ed. I can practically smell it on you, so thick I’m going to choke on it—”

“I was doing it for us!” Ed shouts. “Miss Kringle could ruin everything! I can’t let that happen,” he cups her face in both hands and frowns when she flinches, “you’re my best friend. I love you, Connie. I can’t lose you. Don’t ask me to leave.”

Connie is crying now, her tears wet between his palms and her cheeks. “There is a difference,” she heaves a sob, “between killing somebody for hurting somebody you love and killing just because you like it. If you love me, you’ll give me the space and time I need.” With that, she kisses the heel of his palm and goes on tiptoe to brush her mouth over his.

Ed feels his lips tremble against hers because he knows Connie is kissing him goodbye. When he kisses her chin, she whimpers. Ed moves his mouth to her neck and nips at her throat. Connie is still crying while he kisses her breasts and belly through her blouse and gets on his knees before her. “Lift up your skirt,” he says.

Connie does, cheeks flushed and knuckles bloodless. Ed uses his thumb to move her panties aside before he buries his face in her cunt. When she grabs his hair, he grins into her folds and sucks on her clit to make her unspool hard and fast. Ed undoes his pants and rises with one hand tangled in her curls to bury his face between her neck and shoulder, his other hand guiding his cock inside of her before he grabs her rear and fucks her up against the wall as hard as he can. Connie flicks her tongue over the shell of his ear and whispers, “I still want you to move out.”

“No,” Ed pants before he pushes her blouse up out of his way and pulls down the cups of her bra to rub her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

“ _Oh_ ,” Connie whines as the buildup to her next orgasm coils between her legs. It’s the first time he’s been so rough with her without Eddie in control. Ed is always so gentle with her. This is like fucking Eddie, but Ed isn’t talking dirty to her or teasing her. _Integration_ , she thinks. _It worked_. “Ed,” she gasps, “you know we’re having breakup sex, right?”

Ed shakes his head in the space between her neck and shoulder while he buries himself in her to the hilt and forces himself not to move within her, as if he can stop her from breaking up with him so long as he’s inside her.

It ends not with a whimper, but a bang.

* * *

Hallie arms herself to the teeth before they go to rescue Gertrud, although it’s not obvious to anyone who looks, because the only weapon she uses that’s not a part of her is her cleaver.

Oswald watches her blow a smoke ring as he tucks a knife inside his jacket. “I want you to promise me,” his voice trembles with equal parts rage and fear, “promise me you won’t reveal yourself to Galavan.”

Hallie shrugs, birdlike. It’s not like her plan was to breathe fire at him or search his secret lair for treasure. “Okay,” she says, “I promise.”

Butch is leading Oswald into a trap, but they don’t know that when they find the abandoned building where Theo is keeping his mother, near the river Oswald got pushed into months earlier. Oswald waddles to the cage, somehow outpacing his henchpeople, and reaches out for his mother through the rusty bars of the door to her prison cell. Hallie can taste a spell on the metal, but it’s not keeping them out or keeping Gertrud in, not exactly.

“Those won’t do shit,” she mutters under her breath when one of the Golden Dragons hands bolt cutters to Oswald.

Theo enters from the dark hallway and Hallie realizes they walked into a trap. With a quick glance at Butch, who gives her an apologetic press of his lips, she draws her cleaver from under her skirt and over her leggings.

Butch shoots the other henchpeople in the head. Oswald starts freaking out while Gertrud cowers in her cage. Theo and Tabitha both look smug and it turns her stomach. Oswald falls to his knees and begs. Hallie feels her skin crawl when he says, _please_. Not at the weakness he’s showing, but from the anger that boils through her at them for making him this way.

Tabitha unlocks the cage and sets Gertrud free. Oswald is ecstatic, while she waits for something to go wrong. Hallie doesn’t have to wait very long, because Tabitha stabs Gertrud in the back so she dies in the arms of her beloved son.

Oswald apologizes in a broken voice and Hallie quietly imagines what pretty necrotic tissue Tabitha’s toes would make.

Theo orders Butch to kill them both and dump the bodies anywhere.

Oswald tears his eyes away from Gertrud’s body and snarls, “You don’t have the stomach to kill me yourself? No wonder your family was run out of town. You come from a long line of cowards!”

Theo sighs, as if this whole ordeal is a mere nuisance to him. Which, in his grand scheme of things, it probably is. Theo is pompous and melodramatic when he points the pistol he takes from Butch at Oswald’s head, totally unaware of the blade the other man is hiding because he tends to write his enemies off once he ostensibly has them under his thumb. “Any last words?” he asks.

“Yes,” Oswald hisses, “I’m going to kill you.” With that, he stabs Theo in the neck and runs before the bullets start flying.

Oswald jumps out the window after one lucky bullet grazes his leg and Hallie _roars_ , the sound torn out of her throat as her whole body shifts. Tabitha stops firing and turns to shriek as the five-foot-four Chinese-American girl contorts into a gilded dragon, her unsheathed cleaver and shredded clothes on the floor as she flies away.

* * *

Ed has been texting her nonstop ever since Connie forced him to leave Newgrange a week ago. It would’ve been unceremonious if she hadn’t reworked the spell on the house to keep him from coming back. They’re riddles, mostly. Which she leaves unanswered over the phone, but solves every single one in her head. Ed knows her well enough to deduce that, and it pisses Connie off because she in turn knows him well enough to deduce that he wants her to be thinking about him if he can’t be with her.

Kristen still isn’t speaking to her, although she’s apparently been hanging out with Eve of all people, so Connie picks up when Kristen calls because she thinks maybe they can be friends again even after everything.

It’s not Kristen on the other end of the line, though. “I knew you would answer the phone for Miss Kringle.” Ed is grinning. It’s audible in his voice. Well, he always did love being proven right.

Connie feels her guts twist like fettucine around the metallic tines of a fork. “Why do you have her phone?” she whispers. It seems like quiet is called for, somehow.

“Oh, Connie.” Ed manages to sound fond and condescending all at once. “I know you’re smarter than that.”

“Kristen is with you.” Connie feels her stomach flip as bile rises from her throat into her mouth. “Ed, is she alive?”

Ed shrugs even though she can’t see him over the phone. “For now,” he informs her, “and I’ll keep her alive if you solve my riddles. It’s a scavenger hunt, like the one I designed for you on Valentine’s Day. Miss Kringle is your prize, if you win.”

Connie makes a wrecked noise as her heart clenches horribly in her chest. “What happens if I lose?” she asks him softly.

“I win,” Ed informs her, “and Miss Kringle will die.”

Kristen screams through her gag and Connie hears the noise despite how muffled it sounds. “What is everything to someone, and nothing to everyone else?” she riddles him this.

“Your mind,” Ed answers.

“Yes,” Connie says, “but I think you’ve lost yours.”

“I’m not crazy!” Ed snaps and something crashes ostensibly to the floor, something made of glass by the fresh sounds of its shatter. “What can touch someone once and last a lifetime?”

Connie swallows thickly. “Love,” she answers.

“Correct.” Ed hangs up on her after that. Connie wishes she’d kept his semen in a jar, because then she could’ve used it for a locator spell. Instead of thinking to use hair he’s shed or anything he left behind, she texts him all the answers to his riddles and he texts back another: **A word I know, six letters it c0ntains. Subtract just one, and TW ELVE is what remains**.

 **Dozens** , she texts back.

 **Correct** , Ed replies, **but that’s not your answer**.

Ed is a logical, mathematical thinker; paradigms and patterns are his jam. Connie focuses on the numbers: the six letter word, the zero in “contains,” and the way “twelve” is split into unequal parts.

 **8 and 4 and 0** , she texts back, **and a six letter word**.

 **Do you need a hint?** Ed responds.

Connie is torn between her ego and her friend, but of course she chooses her friend over herself. **Yes** , she retorts.

**Who is born on a Monday, baptized on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, ill on Thursday, worse on Friday, died on Saturday, buried on Sunday?**

That’s a nursery rhyme. Connie loves nonsense verse. Ed knows that. _Solomon Grundy_ , she thinks, _Grundy is a six letter word_.

It’s not Connie who solves the riddle, but Google Maps. Connie searches until she finds an apartment building on Grundy Avenue in Old Gotham, ten blocks from the G. C. P. D. Ed’s new apartment is on the eighth floor, his window is lit by the green sign on top of the building, harsh and bright in contrast to the color of her magic.

Connie squares her shoulders and knocks on the door of apartment 804. Ed opens the door and cups her face in one hand while he bends to kiss her neck and inhale the scent of her skin. Connie sees Kristen gagged and tied to a chair over his thin shoulder, her mascara running and those strawberry blonde curls a mess but otherwise unharmed. Ed puts his other hand on her waist as her knees buckle and curls his fingers into her soft flesh through her blouse. Connie flushes with churning shame. “No,” she whispers. “Ed, please.”

Ed hasn’t gone so far that he wants to Vincenzo to cease to be the sole member of her rapist club, so he reluctantly stops touching her. Connie folds her thumb over her middle and ring fingers and charms the gag and ropes off wordlessly, the soft green glow of her magic the only evidence that magic was cast at all. Kristen shudders and runs to her friend on shaky legs before she throws her arms tight around Connie and buries her messy face in her shoulder. Ed shuts the door. Kristen flinches and clings to Connie like roots in the earth.

“Miss Kringle tells me she’s been talking to your cousin,” Ed folds his arms. “I think it’s a little hypocritical of you to break up with me for trying—and failing!—to kill Miss Kringle when the Holiday Killer murdered thirty-three people and Albert Falcone only actually killed one of those victims.”

“Eve killed mobsters,” Connie retorts, “she didn’t try to strangle my best friend. Harvey went after Maroni because he killed his twin brother. What you were going to do to Kristen is worse for me personally. That’s why I broke up with you. Yes, it’s hypocritical and morally reprehensible, but I’m a witch. I don’t think like a mundane human. I know exactly how much power a life is worth and I stop myself from taking power that way every day, which has only gotten more difficult now that I’m coven leader. I can’t be with you,” Connie inhales sharply and forces herself to keep talking, “not only because I don’t agree with killing willy-nilly, but also because I’m scared I might like killing too. That isn’t what I want. That isn’t who I want to be. I’m sorry.” With that, she opens the door and muddles into the hallway with Kristen still clinging to her shoulders. “There’s a victory party for Galavan I have to attend,” she informs him. “I’ll bring the stuff you left at the manor over tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okeydoke.” Ed grins and waves goodbye to her. Apparently he got what he wanted.

Whether he wanted his stuff back or a chance to be with Connie again remains to be seen. Whichever it is, now he knows that Connie isn’t scared of him.

What she’s scared of is herself.

* * *

Hallie shifts back to human form in a few hours. There are three new scales at the corner of her left eye, conspicuous and beautiful all at once, but otherwise not much has changed. Theo has become the new mayor of Gotham and established martial law by implementing a curfew and ordering the strike force to search door to door on their manhunt for Oswald in the meantime. Harvey warns Hallie about his dastardly plan through Eve, playing the do-gooder ADA at the precinct to perfection while he feeds them information on Theo. Gordon, meanwhile starts to suspect Theo is shady as hell.

Oswald watches the interview in which Theo calls him out on the old television at the safehouse; he breaks the screen with a crowbar in the aftermath, his whole body trembling, the rage and grief in him palpable.

“Okay,” Hallie squeezes his shoulder as gently as she knows how, “calm down, Qǐé.”

Oswald turns and swings the crowbar into the motion. Zsasz surprises Hallie when he not only takes the crowbar from Oswald, but when he doesn’t try hitting her with it either. Oswald crumples, not unlike his wrinkled shirt, and sobs. Hallie doesn’t bother to comfort him. Whatever he’s going through isn’t something that can be fixed with a hug.

Zsasz gives her a manic grin. “We’re all going after Butch,” he informs her gleefully. “Want to come?”

“No.” Hallie declines and narrows her eyes at Zsasz in warning because he’s looking at her like he’s caught somewhere between wanting her dead and wanting to fuck her. “I don’t like guns.”

“How come?” Zsasz grins wider. “Maybe bullets aren’t honorable like a blade?”

Hallie rolls her eyes at the stereotyping. It has fuck all to do with honor. Which has never been her concern, to be honest. Darius taught her that survivalism trumps honor always. “No,” she flips him off and snatches the crowbar from him before she ties it in a knot as if the tool was made of yarn or string instead of solid heavy metal, “my trigger finger pulls too hard during kickback.” Indeed, many antique revolvers were destroyed that way after Eve and Connie tried to teach her to shoot when they were teenagers.

“Now let’s get dressed,” Oswald practically drags her into the other room after Gabe offers to kill Theo and Zsasz has gone. “We have a party to attend.”

Hallie sighs and lets him pull her weight.

“Will you wear the cheongsam for me?” Oswald asks softly.

“Yeah.” Hallie paps his face. “I’ll wear my qipao if you promise to never ever speak Chinese again.”

Oswald nods and kisses her fingers before he goes to change into an outfit that matches the horde of doppelgangers he assembled. Hallie puts on a black silk dress embroidered with golden dragons and puts her hair up because the stiff collar hides the scales on her neck. If anyone makes inquiries about the scales under her left eye, she’ll pretend they’re sequins; people see what they want to see. Unfortunately most would rather see gold sequins than a dragon for some unfathomable reason.

Harvey introduces Theo while Eve works the crowd and Hallie is keeping Connie company in the corner. Theo finagles Connie into taking a picture with him before the doppelgangers show up, his fingertips brushing the base of her spine through her gown. Connie shudders with disgust, but hopes he misconstrues her reaction as something more flattering. Gordon evacuates Theo in time for Oswald to pull a gun on them. Bullock holds him at gunpoint instead.

Tabitha shoots Oswald through his shoulder and Hallie _roars_ , shifting into a dragon and swooping down to grab Tabitha in her claws. Oswald steals a limousine and drives off toward Newgrange because he knows it’s the safest place in the city for a man that doesn’t want to be found.

* * *

Connie finds the limousine Oswald stole parked sideways on the bridge to Newgrange, blocking her from going home. Hallie is there in dragon form and Tabitha is nowhere to be seen.

 _OSWALD IS HURT_ , says the dragon, so the gilded beast that is her bestie can speak telepathically, except she doesn’t seem to notice that her mental voice sounds like a megaphone and she has no idea how to turn back into a person.

 _I’m not a telepath_ , Connie thinks more to herself than Hallie.

Hallie doesn’t hear her, because of course it can’t be that simple. Instead her friend keeps yelling until Connie gets out of the roadster, shoves Oswald into the passenger seat of the limousine, and drives him the rest of the way to the manor.

Connie parks her roadster in the garage and weighs her options. There are many witches that are doctors too, only she doesn’t trust most of them. Ed knows all of her secrets, but he’s also cuckoo bananas and murder happy. Leslie is oathbound to the coven and to her, but she’s dating a cop and she might feel morally obligated to bring Oswald in.

 _Ed it is_ , Connie thinks. _I recast that motherflipping spell for nothing, fuck my life_.

“Couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” Ed asks, delighted, when she calls him.

“I need you right now,” Connie informs him. “Penguin is bleeding from a gunshot wound in the back of a limo I’m pretty sure he stole from Galavan himself. I want you to come stitch him up,” she winces as Hallie yells telepathically at her again, “bring painkillers.” At that, she hangs up and goes to find a yellow legal pad.

 _SHUT UP_ , she writes in all caps on the topmost page, _or learn how to control the volume of your telepathic voice_.

 _Sorry_ , Hallie thinks. _I’m freaking the fuck out. I turned back to human form a few hours afterward when I shifted yesterday, but I can’t remember how I did it and so I’m stuck this way until I do_.

 _That sucks_ , Connie writes on a fresh page and holds it up to the window because her draconic friend would probably fit in the foyer, but she’s too large to fit through the front door.

“Is that Hallie?” Ed wonders after he arrives. “Did we know she could become a dragon?”

“Nope,” Connie sighs. “That’s new.”

Ed knocks out their feathered friend with a drug he probably stole from the precinct and methodically cuts his suit off before he stitches up the bullet hole. Luckily it went through and through, so no extraction is required. Connie tries and fails not to stare at his long, clever fingers while he works.

“Do you remember when we watched _Silence of the Lambs_ in high school?” Ed asks.

Connie unclenches after her fingers clutch at her skirt, the flinch symptomatic of a guilty startle. “Yes,” she grimaces. “I had nightmares for a week.”

Ed nods. “Because the senator’s daughter looked like you,” he chortles, “so you thought someone was going to make a person suit out of your porcelain skin.”

Connie wrinkles her nose at his word choice. “I have never called my skin porcelain,” she protests.

“No,” Ed grins at her and peels off his rubber gloves. “I embellished. I could also compare your complexion to ivory, or cream, or bone china, or lunar moth wings, or Snow White—”

“Ed,” Connie valiantly resists the urge to further muss his hair, “please stop.”

“Do you remember how Clarice got Hannibal to help her find Buffalo Bill?” Ed asks.

Connie nods, winces as the motion jostles her updo, and removes the pins in her hair. “Hannibal gave Clarice his insights about the case in exchange for personal information about her.”

Ed grins at her and his eyes go dark behind his glasses. “Quid pro quo, Connie.”

Connie unravels her updo so her curls hang loose and forces herself to ask a question she already knows the answer to. “What do you want?”

“I want you back,” Ed informs her, “but I could be persuaded to settle for a kiss.”

Connie gnaws on her left thumbnail without biting through it. “One kiss?”

Ed grins wider. “One kiss,” he adjusts his glasses and fixates on her from behind them.

When he kisses her in the kitchen, it’s not on the mouth. Connie probably should’ve asked him to specify where he wanted to kiss her. Instead she ends up laying back on the island with her fingers tangled in his hair while he sucks on her clit.

This breakup is either going too well, or horribly wrong. Connie would need to know exactly what she wants to know which, but it’s hard to trust oneself when one is getting cunnilingus from their murder happy ex with a telepathic dragon in the yard and a fallen kingpin conked out in a nearby guest room.

Connie screams when she comes and feels his wicked grin against her soft, trembling flesh.

 _This breakup is not going so great_ , she thinks.

* * *

Ed stays at the manor for a week taking care of Oswald, using up all of his sick days while he gets saltier and saltier about Connie avoiding him in the aftermath of the quid pro quo incident; he wants to murder Kristen so badly, not only because taking his former crush out of the equation seems like the best way to solve his problems with Connie, but also because the woman he loves—his best friend in the world—chose Kristen over him.

After he draws that conclusion, Ed has an epiphany about why they broke up: because Connie loves Kristen and their friendship trumps her romantic feelings for Ed.

Unfortunately, when he tells Oswald love is a weakness, he’s heartbroken himself and bitter as hell about it. Connie is the person he loves the most, but it’s not mutual. That’s enough to make him murderous, to bring a victim for Oswald practically on a silver platter, to give his feathered friend a chance for retribution because he can’t strangle Kristen like he wants to.

Ed is not a man who cannot be bargained with, a man who cannot be betrayed, or a man who answers to no one but himself; he’s a man in love with a woman who broke his heart for another woman whom he once thought he loved too. Oswald is grieving his mother under the misconception that Hallie won’t return to human form until he’s grown old without her, which is why he decides to leave Gotham after he heals and kills Theo to avenge Gertrud.

Connie returns to Newgrange to find Ed drumming with her tarnished heirloom silverware on the mahogany tabletop in the banquet hall while Oswald drinks copious amounts of wine. Leonard is dead further down the table, his blood draining slowly into empty jars Connie recognizes as the receptacles she keeps in her kitchen.

“I kept his blood for you,” Ed informs her gleefully, “he was Galavan’s lackey, so maybe you can learn something useful from him.”

Connie bites through her left thumbnail and looks away while the magic inside her evolves from a whisper to a scream.

Hallie chooses that moment to heave a sigh and prop her chin on Connie’s shoulder. “Holy sun cows of Apollo,” she intones at the sight of the corpse on their banquet table. “I become more of a dragon for a week and everything goes to shit.”

Oswald turns at the sound of her voice and stands so abruptly he knocks over his chair, which may have something to do with how drunk he is on the wine he procured from the cellar in the basement. Connie exhales a soft noise, like all of the wind has been knocked right out of her lungs, and slumps until Hallie is supporting her corpulent weight. Luckily her draconic friend has superstrength, because Connie is not as light as a feather—or stiff as a board, for that matter. Hallie gives Connie a hug before she gently puts her friend back on her feet. Oswald wraps himself around her like a drunken mess, all flailing limbs and malodorous breath and ridiculous hair.

Ed raises his glass and grins. “Welcome back,” he says.

Connie flops into a chair and conjures a bottle of scotch onto the table before she pours herself a glass. Ed reaches over to clink his glass against hers and smiles when she clinks back instead of shying away.

 _Lewis Carroll didn’t lie to me_ , Connie thinks. _We’re all mad here_.

* * *

When she visits her brother at Blackgate during his negligible incarceration, Theo suggests Tabitha find herself a nice librarian to torture. Connie is busy containing ritualistic blood sacrifices performed by the Order of St. Dumas all over the city, but her coworker Laurel isn’t.

Fortunately a friend of Eve’s from law school named Dinah Drake is visiting her boyfriend Larry Lance, a detective with the G. C. P. D., and she uses her accursed voice—which she calls the canary cry—to save the woman whom she will name her daughter after.

But that’s another story.

* * *

Harvey prosecutes the trial of Galavan versus the State of New York in what is essentially a kangaroo court, and he calls Aubrey James—the former mayor—to the stand as a witness against Theo. Whatever plan the two-faced attorney had backfires into an epic failure when he accuses Oswald of abducting him. Harvey fingers the two-headed coin is his pocket and wonders if he should’ve asked Eve to glamour his witness until Gordon screams at Theo and punches him in the face in front of the press and everyone.

Gabe is waiting on the bridge when Oswald waddles down the path to meet him, only to learn Theo has been let go.

Theo, meanwhile doesn’t even bother to use magic when he knocks Gordon down and orders him killed by the officers he corrupted. Gabe shoots both men in the back so Oswald can get the information he wants from his so-called friend. There is a warrant out for the arrest of the detective. According to the _Gotham Gazette_ , he and Oswald were in cahoots and they planned the attack on Theo, which is preposterous, because the attack in the courtroom—while highly publicized—was obviously concocted in the heat of the moment, not unlike a man spontaneously exploding. Still, it becomes true retroactively when the Penguin takes Gordon back under his wing and Connie shatters every piece of crystal, glass, and china in the kitchen when Hallie and Oswald bring the unconscious detective back to Newgrange.

“Desperate times, Miss Crowley.” Oswald says as Hallie carries Gordon into the guest room closest to the kitchen. “Desperate measures are called for.”

Connie gesticulates one long sweep of her hand and every piece of broken kitchenware puts itself back together again. “I’m going to bed,” she informs him. “Ed’s in his room because he refuses to leave,” she turns back to face him at the mouth of the hallway that leads to her library, “he can patch him up.”

Still, there is a smudge of congealed blood in the shape of her fingertip on Gordon’s cheek when Ed gets around to examining the small laceration there; she must’ve gotten whatever information she wanted, and maybe a lesson in some things she didn’t want to learn.

After all, there is blood on those soldier’s hands, and Connie now knows exactly how it got there.

Gordon wakes up to the sound of Ed and Oswald playing the grand piano in the drawing room and singing a duet. Hallie sleeps like the dead if she doesn’t have to work, which is why a woman people unironically call a lark isn’t singing too. Connie brings him a cup of coffee with a few drops of honey brewed in; he normally takes his coffee black, but secretly this is how he really likes it. Which she knows, because even though it’s not literally in his blood, it might as well be.

Gordon recognizes her after a few groggy blinks. “Miss Crowley,” he says, his deep voice hewn raw from getting the stuffing knocked out of him. “Lee’s cousin.”

“Third cousin,” Connie informs him softly, “but that’s neither here nor there.”

“What the hell?” Gordon rasps.

“At last!” Oswald waddles into the guest room while Ed lingers in the doorway. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so good.” Gordon attempts to get up and crumples like wax paper before he opts to sit on top of the duvet instead, peering at the bespectacled criminalist incredulously. “Nygma?”

Ed grins. “Hi.”

Oswald chortles, the sound more for Gordon than anyone else in the room. “Long story,” his mouth unfurls in a smile, “he’s a friend.”

Gordon starts reflexively checking himself for injuries, assessing the damage while he processes that information. “…a friend?”

Oswald nods, the motion short and sweet. “You’re welcome, by the way. No thanks needed,” he flails one hand facetiously at the detective, “saving your life and all.”

“Yeah,” Gordon says hoarsely, “thanks, I guess.”

“No, really.” Oswald bends to look him in the eyes. “What are friends for?”

Connie sighs at what is being left unsaid, the implication of a favor owed for this salvage, and sips her own hot chocolate.

“You got beat pretty bad,” Oswald continues, “that Galavan is a pistol, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Gordon mutters as he unfolds himself from the rumpled guest bed, “he is.”

“You’re free to go, of course, Jim.” Oswald waddles over to him, getting into his personal space. “Desperate fugitive from the law though you be, but I beg of you, sit and consider…” he pauses to articulate a compelling argument, “…you and I share a bond in Theo Galavan, a passion, if you will. If there was ever a time for us to work together,” he pauses again for effect, “now is that time.”

Gordon looks to Connie. “What about you?” he asks. “Where are you in all this?”

“Galavan thinks the darkness in the city is rooted in the disgrace of his bloodline,” she informs him, “but he’s wrong. It’s much older than a blood feud between the Dumas and the Waynes that began two centuries ago. It was here before Gotham became Gotham. Galavan wants to wake the darkness up, not cleanse the city in blood. That’s what his sacrifices were for. That’s what he wants my cousin Bruce for.”

At that, she forces the cactus on the bedside table to bloom. Gordon doesn’t believe in magic, but she can feel his bloodline continuing through Leslie. Someone has to tell him, and it can’t be someone who loves him, so that falls to her like so many things have lately.

Ed giggles. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’” he grins at Gordon, his excitement not even wilting at how stoic his expression is, “‘than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’” Ed quotes the version of _Hamlet_ printed in Shakespeare’s first folio—with “our” instead of “your”—because they’re human and Connie is not, at least not entirely.

Gordon holds his ground even though she knows he wants to retreat. “What the hell are you?” he asks.

“I’m a witch,” Connie informs him. “Like your girlfriend is.” _Like your daughter will be_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say. Leslie can tell him that herself.

“Don’t be angry with Dr. Thompkins for neglecting to tell you,” Ed chimes in, “she took a blood oath not to tell anyone she loves what she is,” he turns and looks at his ex. “Connie took the same one,” his grin curls into something wicked, “that’s the reason she never told me.”

“Oh,” Connie huffs, “quit flirting with me and go solve crimes you didn’t commit.”

“Okeydoke.” Ed adjusts his glasses after he rises to his feet and bends himself practically in half to kiss her goodbye, his lips pressing softly against the corner of her mouth.

“You’re together?” Gordon asks.

“Not anymore,” Connie sighs, “it’s complicated.”

* * *

Ed tells Leslie where to find Gordon after he arrives at the precinct, which is how Leslie ends up at Newgrange on her lunch break while Oswald gears up for a war. Hallie giggles and offers her a fistbump when she orders the so-called depraved sociopath not to speak. Oswald glares at her until she nuzzles his nose with hers and he smiles without showcasing his teeth, mollified. Leslie ignores them and drops the pregnancy bomb. Oswald rolls his eyes up to the ceiling with a shotgun balanced on his shoulder.

Gordon looks to Connie. “Will it be like you?” he asks.

“Yes,” Connie retorts, “but no.”

“Nobody is like her,” Leslie explains. “Not for centuries. That’s why she’s in charge,” she looks at Connie with parted lips and narrowed eyes, “you told him?”

“I don’t love him,” Connie informs her gently, “and he needed to know. Not only because you’re pregnant, but also because Galavan is a warlock. Guns alone won’t be enough to stop him. That’s why I’m going,” she heaves a sigh. “Gotham is our city. This is our fight.”

“I won’t be any good,” Leslie says bitterly. “None of my powers can help you.”

Connie steps into the circle formed by Leslie and Gordon to give her shoulder a squeeze. “That’s what the coven is for,” she smiles in spite of herself, “helping each other.”

Leslie grins back, her eyes narrowing to half-moons. “And kicking some warlock ass.”

Connie nods. “And kicking some warlock ass,” she takes back her hand, “when we have to.”

Leslie drives off into the night without Gordon, alone in a convertible like a femme fatale, not a pregnant witch flying instead of fighting.

Hallie, meanwhile, drags Oswald into the back room of the abandoned restaurant and kisses him thoroughly. “Have you outgrown your deathwish yet?” she pants when she tugs on his hair to break the kiss.

Oswald nods once, a quick descent of his sharp chin. “Failure is not an option,” he growls before he curls his fingers into the flesh of her waist hard enough to bruise and kisses her again.

* * *

Oswald and Hallie walk down the dark street with Gordon, Bullock, Alfred Pennyworth, Lucius Fox, Selina Kyle, Gabe, and other assorted goons. Connie uses a spell Eve cast for her to sweep inside the building like the wind, ending up behind the motherfucking throne while the Order of St. Dumas chants about the death of the son of Gotham ad nauseam and Theo offers the athame to Silver. Connie rolls her eyes and starts clogging the arteries of the cloaked zealots.

“Sacrilege!” the leader shouts, and bullets start flying until the nonmagical people in the room notice the order had fallen without a single gunshot. Eve considers blowing the parachutes Silver and Tabitha float away on down so they splatter on the asphalt like water balloons, but decides they’re no longer her concern now that they’re literally in the wind.

Connie stops Oswald after his first blow draws first blood from the corner of Theo’s mouth. Instead of kissing him, she uses her thumb to taste his blood and sucks his power away as she gags on foul magic and iron. That’s why hemomancers are rare and coveted, because siphoning magic from the blood without murder or ritual is a power most witches don’t possess. Oswald beats Theo bloody after that until Gordon stops him and shoots the warlock in the head.

Guns are enough, after all.


	9. The Exponential Increase in the Forms of Monstrosity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head between 2x12 (“Mr. Freeze”) and 2x17 (“Into the Woods”).

**It is the oldest and most simple curse on earth, and when properly applied, no cure can be found. Some might call it love.**

Toby Barlow,  _Babayaga: A Novel of Witches in Paris_

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
 **Part 8**  
The Exponential Increase in the Forms of Monstrosity

* * *

**IX**

The invention of sound recording technologies inaugurated the possibilities of both hearing the voices of the dead and manipulating the voices of the living beyond their physical limits. Whence the origins of modern sonic monster, and the exponential increase in the forms of monstrosity. The point-of-view of the dead establishes a countertaxonomy, where perpetual putrefaction and amorphousness reign, while the cutting knife of montage creates unspeakable and impossible anatomies.

* * *

Gordon takes four weeks of leave in the aftermath of Galavan’s death and spends every day of that guilt-tripping Connie into using her powers for good: bringing case files to Newgrange, trying to force her to solve them, and giving her a kicked puppy expression when she refuses.

Connie knows Gordon outside and in without ever having touched him beyond that one swipe of blood from her thumb, but that doesn’t make him less irksome. There is a part of her, the part of her that witches and warlocks all over Gotham have sworn to, that wants to show him what his place is. It’s old world thinking, the kind of thinking that had made Connie feel inferior when she was a little girl who lived in the Narrows—in the gutters of the city her family had owned from the moment they spilled blood on the earth beneath its streets. Unsettling, how quickly she’s becoming what she once promised herself she’d never be.

Gordon wants her to be a good witch and solve the boxes full of unsolved cases in the archives. Connie has other things to do, things that don’t involve being at the precinct when she isn’t at the library; things that don’t involve being anywhere near the man she loves.

Ed is more confident now, sure of himself in a way he never was before: he knows what he wants, and what he wants is her. Of course, he also wants to kill people. There is a bloodlust lurking in him beneath the garden variety lust, and it scares her. Trouble is, she wants him more than ever. Needs him, even. Connie has no one to talk to about how much she’s changing, what she’s becoming. Eve doesn’t understand why she’s conflicted because Eve never doubts herself. Eve is a monster, was born a monster, has always been a monster; Eve is comfortable with being a killer, with being a curse worker, with being a witch.

 _Aunt Torrie is right_ , Connie thinks. _Eve should lead the coven, not me_.

Hallie, likewise, has never been human. Connie is beginning to think she’s been lying to herself all along—she’s caught herself thinking she’s more, thinking she’s better, thinking she owns this city and should be able to take whatever she wishes from its denizens. Their minds. Their lives. Their blood. Their magic. All hers. That’s what scares her. That she’s capable of taking, of killing, of loving the monster she is.

When a handful of long fingers curl and squeeze her shoulder, the intimacy of knowing who those fingers belong to makes her heart clench horribly in her chest.

“What demands an answer, but asks no question?” Ed asks, whispering in her ear like it’s a secret, not a riddle.

“A phone,” Connie whispers back.

Ed hums his approval of her answer, a smug noise that makes heat curdle below her belly, and inhales the scent of pomegranates in her hair.

Connie inhales sharply at the sensation of his breath against her skin and exhales a soft, desperate sound. “Ed,” she whispers, “I need you.” Then, when he cups her face in his other hand and tilts her face up, she clarifies: “I need my best friend, but I can’t be your girlfriend. I’m sorry.”

Ed frowns and his lips are so expressive that it twists his whole face. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you too,” Connie swallows thickly, “but that’s not what I need right now. Ed, please—”

Ed kisses her temple and stops touching her. There’s a part of him that wants to persuade her to change her mind, but he’s also angry with her because she chose Kristen over him; he’s feeling so many things at once it’s discombobulating. Love. Heartbreak. Anger. Lust. Helplessness. Connie is _sad_ , a sadness that slumps her shoulders and takes the shine out of her black hair. Ed has no idea how to fix that or how to help her be happy. If he’s making her unhappy, then he has to make it stop.

Connie flees the precinct and sits in the roadster for a few minutes, trying to remember how to breathe. Ed makes her want to just let _go_ , to stop worrying about what other people think, to just do whatever she wants. With her kind of power, those feelings are _dangerous_.

* * *

Gordon is called in for a deposition at the courthouse twenty-seven days after Galavan was murdered. Harvey, being an ADA, gave the deposition. Eve, being a lawyer, has just won a case totally separate from the shenanigans they got into a month ago. One less rapist walks free. No fines. No reduced sentence because prison would be too hard on him. Eve might regret putting somebody in prison for life, if that somebody hadn’t stuck his dick in somebody else without their consent. As it stands, this is justice.

Harvey is talking to Barnes when she comes to find him. Eve lingers and listens to their conversation, more out of boredom than curiosity. Harvey would tell her about it either way, after all.

“Captivating story,” Harvey says, careful not to let on that he knows it was exactly that. A story. A pretty _lie_.

“Yes,” says Barnes, “it was.”

Harvey looks over his shoulder at Eve, stealing a glance. “Do you believe him?” he asks.

“I believe,” says Barnes, “your investigation has found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”

“Careful,” Harvey says, one corner of his mouth unfurling in a smirk, “you’re starting to sound like a lawyer.”

Barnes exhales a snort, a scoff.

“Any leads on Cobblepot?” Harvey wants to know. Of course he knows Oswald is living at Newgrange with Hallie, but he’s curious about how much information Barnes is willing to share with him.

“His men have deserted him,” Barnes informs them. “He’s all alone. It’s only a matter of time before we find him.”

When he turns and walks away, Barnes notices Eve standing there. There’s recognition in his shrewd gaze, but none of the lewdness that normally lurks in the eyes of men who see a woman like her. Eve gives him a smile that shows her teeth, more predatory than seductive. Barnes is smart enough that she won’t bother with the pretense of being less volatile than she is.

Barnes nods at her, but doesn’t smile back. “Mrs. Dent,” he says in acknowledgment before he leaves.

Eve smiles at Harvey in a softer, more intimate curve of her dark pink lips. “I doubt he knows anything,” she murmurs.

Harvey smiles back, his grin splitting his face as his palms smooth over her elbows and up her arms to her shoulders. “It never hurts to double check,” he points out before he asks: “What’s the verdict?”

Eve smiles wider, bright and vicious. “Life sentence,” she answers as her hands flatten in the space between his jacket and shirt to feel him through the fabric, “he’s lucky he’s not rich enough or connected enough to beat the system. Otherwise, he would’ve left the courtroom in a body bag instead of going on a one-way trip to Blackgate.”

Harvey keeps one hand on her shoulder and cups her face gently with the other, giving her a quick kiss hello before he asks another question. “What about Kristen?” he wants to know. “Does she want to go through with the ritual?”

Eve nods before she digs her fingers into the nape of his neck and kisses him again, harder. So what if winning turns her on? So sue her. After all, she’s a lawyer. If anyone took her to court, she’d just win again.

* * *

Oswald tries to visit his mother at the cemetery while Hallie is working and gets himself arrested. Then he confesses to murdering Galavan to protect Gordon, but uses the insanity defense to avoid a trial and makes Ed promise to visit his mother’s grave when he goes to Arkham. If they’d given him a phone call, he would’ve told Hallie that he loved her; but they don’t, so he doesn’t.

Meanwhile, the husband of a curse worker named Nora Fries is trying to figure out a way to cure the cancer that’s killing her slowly. It’s terminal, because each curse has a cost and for her that’s overgrowth on a cellular level. Eve is _very_ lucky, as curse workers go—she only loses body parts that grow back.

Gordon and Bullock meet Lucius Fox at the Square Diner for lunch during Hallie’s shift. Tanya Fox, Lucius’s wife, is a distant cousin of Eve’s—third or fourth—so Hallie knows the Foxes. Tiffany and Timothy, their fraternal twins, are powerful witches.

“You are correct,” she overhears Lucius tell the detectives, “Wayne Enterprises does manufacture liquid helium. For years it was used as part of our cryogenics program.”

“…cryo-what-nics?” Bullock asks.

“It’s the branch of physics that deals with the production and effects of extremely low temperatures,” Hallie explains as she refills their tiny coffee cups. “Basically, how objects and elements behave in the cold. There’s cryobiology, which is designed to achieve cryopreservation of organic things. There’s cryonics, the cryopreservation of people or animals with the intention of revival in the future. There’s cryosurgery, applying low temperatures to destroy malignancies like cancer cells. There’s cryoelectronics, the research of superconductivity at low temperatures, and cryotronics, the practical application thereof.” Then she gives Lucius a wave, her fingers tapping against the handle of the coffee pot in her hand. “Hi, Mr. Fox.”

Lucius nods at her. “Miss Larkin,” he says. Bullock just looks more confused than before. Hallie shrugs and goes to make her rounds with the coffee pots, holding the regular and decaf coffee in one hand and the hot chocolate in the other. “My understanding,” she hears Lucius continue, “is that there were some promising experiments being carried out in the program, but alas, it was shut down.”

“When was that?” Bullock wants to know.

“Two or three years ago,” Lucius informs him. “Thomas Wayne killed it, along with a few other…odd programs.”

“Any idea why?” Gordon asks.

“No idea,” Lucius answers. “It was all kept very quiet.”

Hallie goes to make another pot of regular coffee—it always runs out faster than decaf—and she’s behind the counter when the detectives leave. **Gordon is investigating Wayne Enterprises** , she sends in a group text to Connie and Eve, **what do you know about cryonics?**

Connie answers: **Nora Fries is dying. Victor Fries, her husband, was part of the cryogenics program at Wayne Enterprises.**

Eve adds: **he tried to get a witch to kill her cancer with magic, but magic is causing the tumors, so that only made her worse. it’s possible he’s trying to use science to succeed where the magic failed.**

Nora is getting worse and worse, and to add insult to injury her prescription has run out. Oswald meets Hugo Strange, chief of psychiatry at Arkham, the same night Victor cryogenically murders the pharmacist who refused to give him a refill. When she learns what Victor has done because the detectives show her, Nora has no choice but to pretend she’s horrified by his experiments. Connie hasn’t told Gordon what she knows, because he didn’t think to ask.

Ed texts Connie later that night, **a body just got up and walked away from my autopsy table. Are there necromancers afoot that I should know about?**

Connie shakes her head before she remembers he can’t see her. **It’s not magic** , she texts back. **It’s science.**

 **Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic** , Ed responds.

 **Clarke’s third law** , Connie replies, **from a speech he gave to the American Institute of Architects in 1967.**

Ed texts back: **I love that you know that.**

Connie doesn’t reply.

* * *

Nora is taken to Arkham that night, and it’s broadcasted over the radio the next morning. Victor hears it from the truck he’s using to store the liquid helium he stole. Hallie returns to Newgrange after a triple shift to find the bed she shares with Oswald empty, but doesn’t question it because she’s exhausted. When yesterday’s issue of the _Gotham Gazette_ tells her that he’s in Arkham, it’s too late. Dr. Strange and Ms. Peabody have begun his rehabilitation.

When he begs Gordon to save him, the detective refuses to believe that Oswald is being tortured. Hallie, meanwhile, asks Connie to get him out of there.

“I can’t,” Connie says gently. “I could get Eve and Harvey to help us orchestrate a jailbreak, but that could take weeks. I doubt Penguin has weeks. I can _feel_ the ground underneath the asylum. It’s soaked in blood. Amadeus Arkham was shady as fuck. Hugo Strange probably isn’t so different.”

 _You would know_ , Hallie thinks. Amadeus had a daughter named Constance with his wife: Harriet Arkham, née Wayne. Constance Arkham married Robert Crowley, and Connie is their granddaughter. Arkham Asylum is her legacy, as much as it’s her cousin Jeremiah Arkham’s…or Bruce Wayne’s.

* * *

After he freezes his wife, Victor is declared legally dead and sent to Indian Hill. Gordon notices that Doherty hasn’t cashed his last two paychecks a week later. No one bothered to look into that, until now. When he gets wind of it, Ed decides that Gordon has to go. Oswald, meanwhile, is released from Arkham after three weeks of rehabilitation with a certificate of sanity that’s signed by Dr. Strange.

Ed is fed up with being taken for granted by the precinct and by Connie. Oh, she said they were still best friends, but she hasn’t eaten lunch with him or come to see him at the G. C. P. D. in almost a month. Eddie is back despite the integration because he’s so lonely he has nobody but himself to talk to.

There’s a new museum exhibit that he was planning to see with Connie. Ed goes alone when she tells him that she doesn’t want to make him think it’s a date and steals one of her favorite paintings by cutting it out of its frame. Then he calls Internal Affairs with an anonymous tip that Gordon, not Oswald, murdered Galavan that night at the docks. Connie sees the swirling green question mark and knows it’s him. It’s the same virulent shade her hair was when they were teenagers, the verdant color of her magic.

Ed calls in a bomb threat at the train station and uses the ensuing panic to frame Gordon for murder. Oswald visits him after Tabitha and Butch have him tarred and feathered and it’s surreal how pleasant he’s become. _Pleasantville_ comes to mind: all of the color bled out of his friend, pleasure interchanged for pleasantries.

Oswald returns to Newgrange after Ed tells him that he’s freaked out by the new him. Hallie is home because it’s her day off, painting her nails to cover the black tint because they’re less human finger and toenails and more draconic claws. When he says her name, Hallie puts the nail polish down and flies over the back of the couch. She doesn’t bother to walk around it like a normal person before she wraps her arms around him tar and feathers and all. It’s hard to avoid crushing his ribcage with her superior reptilian strength, but she thinks he’s been through enough torture. Oswald nuzzles her hair with his long nose, his hands splayed over her back and smoothing a path to the curves of her shoulders. Hallie makes a soft noise that puffs against the hollow under his jawbone. When she kisses him, he makes a startled noise and jumps back so abruptly he wobbles. Hallie moves to catch his elbow and he stops her, looking scandalized.

Hallie lowers her hand, fingers clawing at the space between them. “Oswald,” she narrows her eyes at him. “What’s wrong?”

Oswald bites his lip and shakes his head, trying to banish his thoughts. “What I want to do to you,” he tells her, shamefaced. “It’s wrong. I’m sorry.”

“What’re you talking about?” Hallie wants to know. “What do you want to—”

“I want to have you,” Oswald swallows thickly, “here, now, over the back of that couch. It’s wrong, Hallie.”

 _Oh_ , Hallie thinks. _Oh no. Whatever they did to him broke his brain._ “It’s not wrong,” she says out loud. “I love you. I want you, too.”

Oswald shakes his head again, so vigorously he trips over himself. “I have to leave,” he blurts.

Hallie watches him go and wonders what the hell happened here. Oswald goes to visit his mother at the cemetery and meets his father. It turns out that everything Connie thought she knew—everything Gertrud told Oswald about his father, not about his bloodline—was a big fat lie, because he meets his father at his mother’s grave and is welcomed home by his evil stepmother.

When he murders Carl Pinkney later that night, Ed riddles him this: _What do you call a tavern of blackbirds? A crowbar!_ When he tells Pinkney he made the riddle up, he’s lying. It’s one that Connie told him, years ago; one that makes her laugh because her uncle made it up to cheer her up. There’s a reason he chose a crowbar as his weapon for this murder: a crowbar, a murder of crows. It’s all for her.

Gordon is arrested the next day. Leslie knows better than to ask Connie to intervene. Not only because she knows the leader of her coven doesn’t like the father of her unborn daughter, but also because Gordon is guilty and part of her thinks he needs to pay for his crimes. Maybe then he might stop punishing himself.

* * *

Grace Van Dahl—the evil stepmother of this fairytale—was a waitress like Hallie once, and she was abused by her father like Hallie was abused by her brother Darius. Hearing the story of how Grace and Elijah fell in love makes Oswald think of the woman he loves. Which doesn’t help, because he’s trying to stay away from her.

Hallie, meanwhile, is missing him so much it’s hard to sleep in a bed without him to keep her warm. When she goes to meet his family, she hesitates before she knocks on the door. _Okay_ , she thinks, _they can’t be worse than Gertrud_.

Grace feebly attempts to keep her occupied, but Hallie gets upstairs in time to find Sasha—the wicked stepsister—on top of her boyfriend. Oswald is flailing awkwardly and Hallie feels a pang of jealousy before she realizes he emphatically Does Not Want a half-naked white girl all over him.

“Okay!” Hallie yanks the statuesque brunette off him and hurls her backwards into the opposite wall. “If you ever touch him without his consent again, I’m going to roast you alive and make a feast out of your corpse. Understand?”

Sasha nods and holds her head up high as she flounces out of the room, her strappy black stilettoes dangling from her fingers. Hallie sits on the edge of the mattress next to Oswald, who rolls over to wrap his arms around her waist and nuzzles her belly through her many layers of clothing. “I missed you,” he mumbles into the yarn of her chenille sweater.

Hallie strokes his ridiculous hair and hopes he won’t let go. “I missed you, too,” she tells him softly.

Oswald cups her face and kisses her cheek. It’s sweet, but that makes her profoundly sad. Oswald isn’t _sweet_. When he tries to kiss her mouth, Hallie stops him. Whatever they did to him at Arkham, he’s not himself and kissing him or fucking him while he’s brainwashed really would be wrong. Instead she kisses his nose and leaves to catch the next bus to work. Oswald goes to get a suit tailored by his father, the ultimate bonding activity for snappy dressers, until Elijah has a fainting spell and drinks poisoned sherry meant for his son.

* * *

Bullock is convinced that Gordon is innocent and laments that the real killer is out there somewhere eating doughnuts and getting laid. Falcone breaks Gordon out of Blackgate as a favor to him. Leslie has left Gotham, supposedly because she miscarried after her fiancée was arrested. Gordon, being himself, vows to catch whoever framed him before he goes to find her.

Ed wishes he was in a position where he could get laid, but he doesn’t want anyone who isn’t Connie and she’s not emotionally or sexually available right now. Which doesn’t stop him from going to Newgrange after work. There’s no ulterior motive, no plans for seduction. Ed misses her so much his heart actually _aches_.

Connie is transplanting marigolds from small ceramic pots to a bed of fresh soil. Her face is sweaty and streaked with garden dirt. Her curls are pinned up and back by tarnished silver barrettes shaped like roses. One ringlet has escaped to spiral over the nape of her neck, softly. Ed gently tugs on the tendril and grins when it bounces. Connie peeks at him over her shoulder and smiles. Ed wants to kiss her, to feel her smiling when he slants their mouths together, but he smiles back instead. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” Connie says. It’s heavier than one word should be, stretching out in the space between them.

Ed smiles wider when her cheeks flush, even though he knows she probably isn’t thinking about kissing him. “I know it’s not appropriate for a best friend to say this,” he tells her in a low voice that makes her squirm, “but I think you look very sexy when you bend over like that.”

Connie snorts. “I’m gross,” she retorts. “I’m sweating like a pig. I need to take a shower.”

Ed doesn’t know exactly what comes over him, but he grabs the hose and sprays her with it. Connie yelps and turns to look at him with her eyes incredulously wide. Ed grins and sprays her again, moving into her personal space to aim at the dirt covering her hands, gently thumbing the streaks on her forehead and cheeks until he’s cupping her face in his hand without any excuse to keep touching her. “I think,” he says in a hoarse voice, “you should get undressed so I can be sure I didn’t miss a spot.”

This is her chance to say no. Connie knows this. Instead she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth and unbuttons her blouse, then strips out of her sweatpants. Ed gulps when he sees her pretty pink nipples are hard under the black lace bralette that matches her black lace panties. Which are see-through.

Ed drops the garden hose and kisses her desperately, teeth and tongue, low noises trembling in the back of his throat. Connie moans into his mouth when he palms one of her breasts and flicks his thumb roughly over the hard nub of her nipple. Ed doesn’t bother to take her panties off. Instead he tugs the gusset aside with his thumb and strokes one finger along her slit, groaning at how wet she is for him and crooking his finger after she clenches around it. Ed kisses her thoroughly and greedily while he works her open and doesn’t stop kissing her until his cock is inside of her sweet little pussy. When his breath hitches, it feels like his heart is caught in his throat. There’s water seeping into the seat of his slacks even as pleasure shivers inexorably along his spine.

This is why he didn’t take his pants off: because they’re on the ground in her greenhouse and she’s on top of him, kneeling in the soft flowering moss covering the earth underneath their bodies. Connie exhales a raw sound and swivels her hips slowly. Ed clenches his teeth around a moan of his own and curls his fingers into the flesh of her hips. Instead of holding her there and thrusting up into her, he looks at her face and settles into a rhythm while he watches her moving over him. Connie is blushing from her cheeks to the tops of her breasts, her pupils blown wide, her black curls askew to oscillate around her shoulders. Ed smooths his hands from her hips to her breasts and licks one pink nipple through the lace of her bralette, then the other. Connie shudders and unspools when he thumbs her clit in rough circles. Ed buries his face in her neck and comes inside of her.

“This wasn’t what I intended, Connie,” he murmurs into the hollow of her throat. “I only wanted to see you.”

Connie strokes his hair while he twitches and softens within her. “I missed you, too,” she tells him. “I’m a chthonic witch. I should be able to just go with the flow, but I can’t. I think too much, I guess.”

Ed doesn’t ask Connie what it means because he knows she won’t be able to answer. “It grows and blossoms. It dies and wilts. It happens in the beginning, and happens in the end. It can make you cry. It can make you sad. It can make you smile, and make you brave. What is it?” he asks.

“Love,” Connie answers. Then she asks him: “I am always in front of you, but never here. What am I?”

Ed answers: “the future.”

* * *

When he returns to his apartment, Ed finds that the detective has broken in. Gordon assumes Loeb is behind the frame job because of what he did to Miriam and asks Ed for help cleaning up a recording of the anonymous tip that the Riddler himself called into Internal Affairs. Ed agrees, but Gordon is smart enough turn the tables and deduce that he murdered Pinkney. When he learns that Oswald might’ve told Gordon where they buried Leonard after he was bled dry at Newgrange, he goes to move the body.

 _Into the woods_ , he sings to himself while he unearths the bloodless corpse, _and home before dark_. Connie loves Stephen Sondheim. Maybe he could get tickets to a stage production…

Gordon emerges from behind a tree and keeps his hands up as he walks through the snow toward Ed, who pulled his own gun on him. “How did this happen to you?” Gordon wants to know. “How did you become this?”

“This is who I am,” Ed says. “It was just finally admitting the truth to myself. That and murdering some people.”

Gordon shakes his head and takes one step closer. “I don’t believe that.”

“Why, Jim?” Ed asks. “Because it would make you incompetent to know that I was right there under your nose the whole time? Or you don’t want to admit that there’s a monster in all of us? Because you of all people should know that!”

It’s ironic that he’s going to Arkham two days after he got Connie back, in some vague capacity. Whether they’re friends or lovers or something else, he supposes that now she’ll have some time to think with him locked up. It’s cold comfort when he lies in the snow, but that’s all he’s got.

Oswald, meanwhile, takes his inspiration from Hallie threatening to roast Sasha alive and makes a meal of his wicked stepsiblings after he learns they poisoned his father. Hallie finishes her shift at the diner and she’s too late to watch him stab her in the neck, so she arrives when Grace has bled out in her chair. Oswald has blood on his face and he’s drinking red wine. It’s obvious he’s himself again.

Hallie kicks her boots off, hangs her winter coat and fuzzy hat on the coatrack, and eyes the dinner table. “Okay,” she inhales the smell of the roast he made and gags a little bit at the idea of eating it, even though anthropomorphic dragons eating human meat isn’t technically cannibalism. “I’m guessing _Titus Andronicus_ is your favorite. _The Tempest_ is mine, not that you asked.”

Oswald grins and bares his teeth. Hallie notices that there’s no blood in his mouth. “‘Here’s my hand,’” he says, quoting Ferdinand.

“‘And mine,’” Hallie says, quoting Miranda as she intertwines their fingers, “‘with my heart in’t.’”

Hallie refuses to have sex with a corpse in the house when Oswald tries to bend her over the table. Dragon, she is. Savage, she isn’t.


	10. Imagine a Disembodied Bloodcurdling Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens offscreen in my head in the distant future.

**nobody ever finds**  
**the one.**

**the city dumps fill**  
**the junkyards fill**  
**the madhouses fill**  
**the hospitals fill**  
**the graveyards fill**

**nothing else**  
**fills.**

Charles Bukowski, “Alone with Everybody”

* * *

_The Logic of Monsters_  
**Epilogue**  
Imagine a Disembodied Bloodcurdling Scream

* * *

**X**

Imagine a disembodied bloodcurdling scream. This is my final thesis.

* * *

**Fifteen Years Later**

* * *

Ed has solved a Rubik’s cube for the umpteenth time when the visitor in question slows to a halt in front of his padded cell—quite an upgrade from the first time he was incarcerated here at Arkham Asylum, so many years before—a young girl with ebony curls and intelligent brown eyes.

“What’s so fragile that sound can destroy it?” she asks.

Ed turns and looks at her, a grin spreading over his face. “Silence,” he answers.

“Yes,” says the girl before she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth.

There’s something familiar about her, something that sticks in his mind like a thorn. Ed cocks his head curiously. “What belongs to you, yet others use it more than you do?” he asks.

“Your name,” the girl answers.

“Correct.” Ed claps twice, slowly. “Tell me yours.”

“Edie,” she informs him.

“Miss Edie.” Ed narrows his eyes at her, cataloguing her clothes—Gotham Academy uniform, the patch on her blazer identifying her as a freshman, half-Windsor knot securing her tie around her neck, dark sheer knee socks, black and white saddle shoes, a tarnished silver barrette shaped like a rose in her black hair, a tiny composition book in her breast pocket—and deduces that she might be another fan of his, a lonely teenage girl who gets attached to the idea of a smart, dangerous man. “I’m spoken for,” he informs her. “There’s only ever been one woman for me.”

“I know.” Edie presses her lips into a thin line. “That’s what my mother always says whenever I ask her why she doesn’t date: ‘There’s only ever been one man for me.’” At that, she leans closer to the glass, watching the guard in her periphery. “I’m Edith Crowley. Constance Crowley is my mother,” she looks at him with those dark intelligent eyes—which bear an uncanny resemblance to his very own—and says, “You’re my father.”

**THE END**


End file.
